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LIFE IN THE MOFUSSIL .

OR,

THE CIVILIAN IN LOWER BENGAL.

1:\

\.\ EX-CIVIL I W

II:-

VOL. J.

London :
C. Kegan Paul & Co., i, Paternoster Square.

1.S78.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
VOYAGE OUT.

The Start for India— The Siren — Death on Board — The Shark —
Arrival in the Hooghly — The Ardent Lover — On Shore at

Last

CHAPTER II.

LIFE AS A STUDENT IN CALCUTTA.

Spence's Hotel — Fresh Eggs — Examinations in Native Lan-
guages— The Baital Punshabinshati — The " Chummery " —
A Calcutta Day in the Hot Weather— The Mall— North-
westers—Competition Wallahs — Theatricals — Our Dinner
Party — Dissolution of " Chummery" ■ — Clubs — Snipe
Shooting — Take Leave of Calcutta

CHAPTER III.

JOURNEY UP COUNTRY.

Bhaugulpore — A Mofussil Bungalow — Happy-go-lucky Progress

to Patna — Stay at Patna 54

CHAPTER IV.

LIFE AS ASSISTANT MAGISTRATE AND COLLECTOR A2
MOZUFFERPORE.

Journey Across the Ganges — Dak Bungalow — Drive to Mozuf-
ferporc — Find my Quarters Lonely — First Visit to Cutchcrry,
and Investment in Office — First Case — Chuprassies — Intro-

LIB SETS

iv Contents.

v \<:r

duction to my Magistrate and Collector— Sworn in as
Assistant Collector 79

CHAPTER V.
A T MOZUFFERPORE.

1 ormal Calls— Furniture — A Curious Operation — An Afternoon's
Sport— A Revenue Case— A Sunday's Wolf- Hunt— End of
Case of Lakshmcc Telinec — Mookhtyars and Witnesses —
The Race-Meeting— Hot Weather— Native Christians-
Native Visitors — A Social Contretemps . . . .no

CHAPTER VI.

A T MOZUFFERPORE.

The New Police — A River Trip — Examination at Patna — Sone-
pore Fair— Shooting Party in the Nepaul Terai — Illegal
Orders 152

CHAPTER VII.

ASSISTANT MAGISTRATE IN CHARGE OF DURBHUNGAH.

Take Over Charge from my Predecessor — Butwarras — A Difficult
Case — Second Examination — Volunteer Cavalry — Public
Meeting — "Izzat" Accident at Court — Invested with Full
Powers — A Native Nobleman 196

CHAPTER VIII.

A T DURBHUNGAH.

Nundiput's House — An Assistant Superintendent of Police —
System of Excise — Final Examination — Riot Cases — Indigo
Sowing Case — Indigo Planters — Jugdeo Suspect — Nepaulese
Case — A Tiger Party— A Narrow Escape — New Municipal
Act — Bunwarree Lall and Public Works Department —
Appointed to Nuddea — Regret at my Departure— Agricul-
tural Show— Good-bye to Durbhungah 234

LIFE IN THE MOFUSSIL;

OR,

THE CIVILIAN IN LOWER BENGAL.

CHAPTER I.

VOYAGE OUT.

THE START FOR INDIA. — THE SIREN. — DEATH ON BOARD. — THE
SHARK. — ARRIVAL IN THE HOOGHLY. — THE ARDENT LOVER. —
ON SHORE AT LAST.

How well I remember the 4th of October, 186- It was
a lovely evening, and I was seated, with one or two others
of my own age, smoking the cigar of contentment on the
poop of the good ship Lady Ellenboroitgh, now anchored in
the Downs, and waiting for the breeze which should enable
her to make a start independent of tugs and all other such
troublesome and expensive accessories, on her journey to
Calcutta.

It was indeed the cigar of contentment that I smoked ;

for had I not passed the competitive examination for the

Indian Civil Service sufficiently high to enable me to

select Bengal as the field of my future career ? had I not

VOL. I. B

Life in the Mofussil.

scraped through the second examination in some myste-
rious way by the light of nature ? and was I not now fairly
launched in the world, with a prospect of novelty, excite-
ment, ami a fair competence before me?

All my compeers had gone, or were about to go, by the
overland route, and I, in compliance with instructions from
the India Office, had endeavoured to secure a passage
which should enable me to leave England before the end
of November ; but the P. and O. officials had informed me
very curtly that they could not supply me with such ; that
they could not let me know if any unforeseen vacancy
should occur ; and when I stated with a certain stiffness
that I must find some other means of getting to my des-
tination, had received the threatening announcement with
the most blank unconcern. The opening of the Suez Canal
has possibly made some alteration in this state of things.

On the whole I was not sorry to be compelled to apply
to Messrs. Green, and was almost disappointed when the
chief mate told me in the docks that the voyage would not
occupy more than three months. Little did I think that
those three months would be stretched into nearly five,
and that long before one-third of the journey had passed I
would have eaten any amount of humble pie to be allowed
any corner on the deck of a P. and O. steamer, with a
chance of a speedy end to the miserable monotony of a
sea voyage.

There were thirty-six of us first-class passengers on
board — eighteen of each sex ; and the agent of the Com-
pany, who had come to Gravesend to see us off, had
assured us, with a sort of paternal unction, that we were

The Start. 3

a very pleasant party and ought to have an agreeable
time of it.

It might be thought that this parity in numbers would
have ensured tranquillity ; but it certainly did not, for
somehow or other we quarrelled frequently, and with great
earnestness.

The placid evening turned into a blustering morning ;
the cigar of contentment very decidedly disappeared, and
for a week or more we tacked from side to side of the
Channel, without, as far as I could see, ever getting any
further down it, until at length some less unfavourable
deity sent us an easterly wind, which froze us all to the
marrow, but enabled our pilot to leave us, and carried us
well on into the mighty Atlantic.

I think it was about a fortnight after the pilot's de-
parture that I came to the conclusion that woman's
society was the greatest bliss upon earth, and, about three
weeks later, that woman was the origin of all evil.

There was among us a little lady, a widow, young,
decidedly pretty, with golden hair and blue eyes, — one
who might have figured as the heroine in one of Miss
Braddon's novels, — to whom a gallant lieutenant paid
much attention, which attention, according to my inexpe-
rienced ideas, appeared to receive marked encouragement.
Consequently I envied him much.

One beautiful moonlight evening I was on deck, leaning
over the stern, looking at the phosphorescent coruscations
in our wake, when I heard the soft rustic of a dress close
by me, and on looking round, found the golden-haired
siren by my side. We were, of course, on terms of ordi-

4 Life in the MofussiL

nary acquaintance, and made a few commonplace remarks
on the beauty of the night Presently she said, — there
was some meal going on in the saloon, and, with the ex-
ception of the man at the wheel, we had the poop to our-
selves,—

'• What a comfort it is to be able to get away, even for
a few moments, from the wearisome society of the same
individuals day after day."

To which I, thinking of the lieutenant, and inclined to
be a little malicious, " Is it all wearisome ? "

" All."

" Without exception ? "

" Without exception."

"That is not very flattering to your fellow-voyagers,
myself included."

" You, Mr. Gordon, have not given me much opportunity
of ascertaining whether your society is wearisome or the
contrary."

"Would you care to have such opportunity ? "

Hesitatingly, and with an upward glance, " I think I
should."

" But," said I, much flattered, " there is an obstacle ;
there is "

" Oh," with a petulant pout, " you mean Lieut. Ogle.
His name ought to have been spelt with an ' r/ not an '1.'
He is a bore and a boor. How can you think his society
could be any pleasure to me ? "

" Well," I began ; but I thought it better not to say
what I thought.

She continued, " Don't think me too outspoken ; but

The Siren. 5

it is such a relief to be able to speak to some one who
perhaps may sympathize with the dull torture I have
endured for the last ten days — perhaps would now help
to rid me of it."

This with a long, full look of her very pretty blue eyes.

" How ? " I asked eagerly.

"Shield me with your companionship," she said ; and her
hand stole out towards mine, which grasped it fervently.
Just at that moment we heard steps on the companion
ladder, and separated.

As I entered the saloon, I saw the lieutenant seated at
whist and apparently in high spirits ; but I pitied him —
yes, pitied him from the bottom of my heart.

The next morning I finished my breakfast hastily, so as
to be early on deck and ready with all those little atten-
tions that male passengers are in the habit of paying to
their friends of the other sex on board ship, such as
placing chairs, arranging rugs, etc., etc. These were all gra-
ciously accepted ; and the lieutenant, on loitering up in the
full confidence of possession, was surprised and displeased
to find himself forestalled. Still more displeased was he,
on offering his services for the usual morning walk on
deck, to find mine accepted instead ; and at dinner his
brow grew black as thunder when he perceived that the
fair one, by some mysterious influence over the captain,
had managed to change her seat so as to be near me.

This state of things lasted for some days. The lieu-
tenant ceased to proffer further attentions, and became
sulky and moody. He was of a temper not subject to
much control, I fancy; but was astounded, as well he

6 Life in iJic Mofussil.

might be, at the change in the aspect of affairs, arising
from no known fault of his own. To me it was a time of
idyllic happiness. My fair companion laid herself out to
please me. Her conversation was piquant, she was toler-
ably well read, and in various respects I began to under-
stand that my society was more congenial to her than that
of her former friend. In short, it became gradually a mat-
ter of no surprise to me that I was preferred before him.

His demeanour, however, by degrees, became more trou-
blesome to us — to me especially. Puzzled surprise began
to give place to an indignant sense of wrong ; and as
he could not vent his anger on her, it became clear that
it would fall on my devoted head. He was sometimes
boisterous, sometimes moody, and occasionally made rude
remarks about me, intended for my hearing. What was
most galling to him probably, was, that in the cramped-
up life on board ship it was impossible for him to avoid
the sight of the fair cause of all his woe, and his successful
rival, for whom, of course, knowing nothing, he could
make no excuses. A quarrel might perhaps have been
avoided, — for my own wishes were pacific enough, — had
it not been for our thus being continually brought in
contact with each other. But at length it happened one
rough morning, while walking on deck with Mrs. Vivian, I
knocked against Ogle and trod hard on his foot. Apart
from all previous indignation, it must really have hurt
him a little, and he turned round on me like a mad bull.
I was prepared to defend myself; but suddenly, with a
strong effort, he restrained himself, and saying, " You shall
hear more of this," turned away and went below.

The Qtmrrcl. 7

I looked at my companion, who appeared composed, but
thoughtful.

Presently she said, " Poor fellow ! "

" Who ? " I inquired.

" Lieutenant Ogle."

" Why ? "

" He must have been so fond of me."

This was disconcerting, and I suppose my looks showed
it, for she added, that " It was no use, if I could not be
fond of him."

That evening, after dinner, a Captain Talbot, a cavalry
officer, came to me with a message from Ogle, demanding
satisfaction.

" Does he mean me to fight a duel ? " I said.

" Beyond a doubt," said Talbot.

" But it is too absurd. If I trod on his toe, it was purely
accidental, and I am quite ready to beg his pardon."

" You have trodden on something else besides his toe.
You know very well what I mean. If you don't meet him
as he demands, he will assault you ; and as he is physically
much stronger than you, you will get the worst of it, and
cut rather a sorry figure. You had better refer me to some-
body on your part, and possibly matters may hereafter be
arranged. You, of course, understand that it is necessary
anyhow to keep the matter perfectly secret."

Of course I knew very well what he meant Naturally,
the little episode I have been describing could not go on in
our small society without being observed by all our fellow-
passengers. Ogle had been the object of some little sym-
pathy and a good deal of ridicule. The causa tctcrrima

8 Life in the Mofussil.

was sincerely hated by all her own sex, and much admired
by all the unmarried members of mine, while my apparent
good fortune had excited some envy. I began to find my-
self in anything but a comfortable position. I was under
the impression that duelling was a thing of the past, though
I had heard oi' stories of its still occurring occasionally in
India. Ogle could certainly thrash me if he chose ; but
then, was not a thrashing better than possible death ? for I
knew not how to handle a sword, and my pistol practice
was confined to a trial of my new revolver, securely sol-
dered down in a packing-case lined with tin in the hold.

But if I refused to fight I should certainly be branded
as a coward, and the fear of the scorn of my fellow-pas-
sengers was very terrible to me, a thing not to be escaped
from, day after day, for many a weary week. Besides,
what would my Helen say ? On reflection, it seemed to
me there was nothing for it but to fight ; so I sought out
a young hussar with whom I was on friendly terms, and
placed myself in his hands. The next morning he in-
formed me that it was arranged that swords should be the
weapons, and the field of battle Talbot's large stern cabin.

Swords had been selected as Ogle was very blood-thirsty
and wanted to fight with pistols across a handkerchief.
It was thought a combat with swords would probably have
a less serious termination, my friend gravely informed me.
It also appeared that all available swords were soldered up
in tin down in the hold to prevent their being injured by
the sea damp ; and that until some plausible reason could
be assigned to the captain for getting them up, matters
must remain in abeyance. Further, the weather was rough,

Demand for Satisfaction. 9

the glass was falling, and until the sea became smooth and
the weather fine, no baggage would be got up from the
hold.

How fervently I prayed for constant tempest until the
voyage's end.

Matters being so far settled, there was no further mo-
lestation from Ogle ; indeed, he avoided us as much as
possible ; and Mrs. Vivian, with woman's curiosity, was
most eager to know what had happened after our deck
rencontre. At length I gave way, and told her. She
evinced the prettiest consternation, positively lavished
tenderness upon me, and actually, I recollect, embroidered
my initials in two of my handkerchiefs with her golden
hair.

The kindly gale continued for some days ; but even the
most welcome storms must come to an end, and after one
or two refusals the packing cases had actually been got up
from the hold and the swords taken out.

Once or twice during the last two or three days I had
found my fair friend in somewhat close conversation with
Talbot, and the last time I had remonstrated with her, and
told her I thought she had been also a little cold in her
manner to me.

" I have been pleading for you," she said, " and trying to
get Captain Talbot to put off by some means or other this
miserable duel, but without success."

How could I be suspicious after this ?

The dreaded day was at length fixed, and the affair was
to come off in the early morning in Talbot's cabin. This
was of course a secret from all except the four concerned.

io Life in the Mofussil.

I had bid, as I thought, a specially tender good-night to
Mrs. Vivian, and had retired early, intending to make a
few memoranda which might be of importance, before
turning in. Presently I heard a knock at the door.

" Come in !" I shouted ; and there entered, to my intense
nishment, Ogle.

" Shake hands, Gordon," he said, "and permit me to ask
if you still insist on our turning out specially early to-
morrow morning."

My astonishment was only equalled by a feeling of relief,
which for a second or two prevented speech ; but I grasped
his hand, and at length managed to say, " Most willing to
be friends. But why "

" All right," he interrupted, brusquely. " Good night,"
and disappeared.

The next day I told Mrs. Vivian of the very unexpected
reconciliation that had taken place. To my surprise she
got very pale, seemed much agitated, and certainly not
pleased, and after one or two vague remarks pleaded a
headache, and left me.

That evening Talbot came to me and said : " I have
come to you on rather a delicate mission, Gordon. I wish
to premise that I have every desire to avoid hurting your
feelings in any way; the question whether we are to remain
on friendly terms or not must rest with you. Mrs. Vivian
has commissioned me to say that your attentions to her
have become so marked as to form the subject of remark
to her fellow-passengers, and she desires that they may be
discontinued."

The sudden and very unexpected nature of this an-

" V avium et Mutabilc Semper!' 1 1

nouncement was overwhelming. At length I gasped,
" Why are you chosen for this communication ? Why has
she not told me herself? "

" I do not know that I am bound to answer that ques-
tion," he said ; " but I may as well tell you, that possibly
the connection between Mrs. Vivian and myself may be of
a closer nature than that you at present think likely ; and
this mission is a proof of her confidence in me."

I wanted time for reflection. " I will speak to you
to-morrow," I said.

That night was a very miserable one for me. My first
feeling, I think, was one of intensely mortified vanity. I had
been very proud of my selection from among all the other
men available, by this very pretty and very desirable
creature. My pride had been daily flattered by the con-
sciousness that I was a conspicuous object -of envy to my
male fellow-passengers ; it would now be daily wounded
by the feeling that I was similarly an object of ridicule,
the envy being transferred to another. For I felt too
certain that nothing I could do would enable the pre-
viously existing state of things to continue. I could now
fully enter into all poor Ogle's feelings ; but then also I
could make excuses for Talbot, for I had had an experi-
ence that Ogle had not.

After a sleepless night I came to the conclusion that
the only thing to be done was to make the best of what
appeared to me then a very unhappy business. Above
all things it was desirable to avoid becoming an object of
ridicule. The only way to attain this was, if possible, to
appear nonchalant, to remain friendly both with Talbot

1 2 Life in the MofussiL

and Mrs. Vivian ; and this very difficult line of conduct I
set myself resolutely to carry out.

The next morning, therefore, I was able to meet Talbot
apparently cheerfully, and to say, " Let us be friends; and
perhaps you will tell Mrs. Vivian I shall obey her instruc-
tions, but shall be glad to be on friendly terms with her
also, if she will permit it."

He looked at me suspiciously, but he need not have done
so, for my only design was to pursue the policy before in-
dicated.

I took care therefore to wish her good morning in the
ordinary way, placed her chair, etc., and then left her. She
gave me a very curious look, but said nothing.

After this, the tediousness and confinement of the voyage
was something almost insupportable. The part I had to
play was a very hard one ; and I was exposed to incessant
and trying curiosity, and it was difficult to keep one's own
counsel. At any rate I had avoided ridicule. Ogle, I
think, was astonished at my coolness. He had confided to
me unasked, that the night before our proposed combat,
he had seen Talbot kissing Mrs. Vivian, and this had con-
vinced him that she was not worth fighting for ; and this
explained his sudden desire for a reconciliation and Mrs.
Vivian's agitation on hearing of it. On further acquaint-
ance I found him a very good fellow, with high notions of
honour, and, though of an impetuous temper, a thorough
gentleman.

The weeks wore on, and still we seemed to get no nearer
the end of our long journey. The boundless sea around
us, no topic of conversation but ourselves. Various other

The Albatross. 13

little episodes occurred, but I had been too deeply touched
to take much interest in them.

One day I recollect an albatross was caught, and as
most ladies on board had expressed a desire for some of
the feathers, each man who had some one to please made
a dash at the wretched bird as it was drawn on deck, and it
was in a dozen pieces almost before it was dead. It had
been hauled up by a line, having been caught with a baited
hook, like a fish ; and Talbot was so eager in hauling it up
that he jerked his watch out of his pocket, and I saw it
sink down into the deep, clear sea. I was glad to be out
of this proceeding altogether.

I don't think a long voyage is good for characters that
have not great powers of self-control. In the first place, it
is almost impossible to settle down to any serious pursuit
on board ship ; I don't know why this is so, but every one
with whom I have travelled has confirmed me in the truth
of this statement. After my discomfiture I tried to take
up Hindustani with vigour ; but I did very little good,
though there was absolutely no other occupation to distract
my attention. My thoughts, too, would run on the plea-
sant companionship I had lost. There was nothing near
to replace it, and, indeed, after being so long in daily
contact with the same people, without any possibility of
change, one began to feel as if all society were limited to
one's fellow-passengers, and the most trifling events and
feelings assumed undue importance.

I gradually found that, as I had avoided ridicule, so I
had obtained a good deal of sympathy ; and more than one
fair friend volunteered congratulations on my escape from

14 Life in the Mofussil.

the chains o{ the siren ; and this, of course, strengthened
me in my line of conduct. For her behaviour I could only
account on the old principle of "Varium ct mutabile semper
femincu" I think she began to get tired of Talbot. For
some time our intercourse had been confined to mere
formal salutations, though I occasionally moved her chair
or offered some similar attention. One day, when I had
done some such thing, no one else being by, she said sud-
denly, " I did not give you up without a pang."

She looked very pretty, and I was sorely, sorely tempted
to give way ; but I mustered all my firmness, and saying
merely, " That is an interesting piece of information,"
moved off.

After this she declined to return my salutations, and we
were no longer acquaintances. Occasionally she took the
opportunity of making spiteful remarks to Talbot about
me in my hearing, and I could see his look of mortified
vexation, for he was a fine fellow and a gentleman, and I
began to feel that my turn of vengeance had commenced.

Time dragged wearily on. We had crossed the line, and
I, with the rest of the male passengers, had undergone the
disgusting shaving and ducking that forms part of the
ridiculous ceremony on the occasion. I had also induced
two credulous and middle-aged women to believe they
had actually seen the Equator by stretching a hair across
a telescope. We had passed the Cape, and left behind us
the friendly and bracing westerly gales which carried us
along some 300 miles per day, getting in exchange the
calms and heat of the Bay of Bengal. WTe had buried in
the hot blue waves one little child that had been a crreat

A Death on Board. 15

pet on board. The circumstances were very painful, as the
mother was of Asiatic origin and utterly unable to control
her grief. The poor little body had to be taken from her
by force. She swore solemnly that she would throw herself
into the sea when the coffin should be slid overboard ; and
it was necessary to confine her to her cabin, with a guard
over her, during the burial ceremony ; and all the time her
shrieks, only too audible to all of us, were heartrending.
The coffin, too, was not sufficiently weighted to sink, as it
should have done, and floated within sight until the dark-
ness of night hid it from us.

The only redeeming point was, that before the burial
we caught a shark. It had been seen in our neigh-
bourhood for the last two days, and the sight of it had
been accepted as an evil omen for the fate of the poor
child so dangerously ill. Its pertinacity in following us
certainly appeared to be an instance in support of the
belief that the shark has an instinctive foreknowledge ot
the approach of death at sea ; but on the other hand, sharks
even more frequently follow ships when there is nobody
dying on board. Several baits of some pounds of pork,
each attached to enormous hooks, had been hung out for
him ; but he had treated them all with disdain, until about
2 P.M., or two hours before the hour fixed for the burial,
when he came up to a line held by the second mate, turned
over on his back, displaying his white belly, as sharks are
compelled to do, from the position of their mouth, when
about to seize anything, and wholly gorged the bait.
There ensued a tremendous hauling and pulling, and it
took nearly half an hour to get the monster on deck, and

1 6 Life in the MofussU.

some further time to despatch him there with a hatchet.
He was a most hideous brute; I forget the dimensions
now ; but on opening him we did not discover in his maw
any bracelets or buttons, or such things as are usually
described to be found therein. His heart was taken out,
and continued to beat strongly. Sailors have a superstition
that a shark's heart will not cease to beat until after sun-
set of the day of its death. I can recollect that I saw
his beating fully three hours after the creature was killed,
but I cannot remember when it actually became still.

For a month after crossing the line the second time I do
not believe we made ioo miles ; but at last a southerly
breeze sprung up, after a week of which our captain in-
formed us that in another twenty-four hours we should
probably sight the pilot brig. He was mistaken, however,
for he had taken a wrong course, and for forty-eight hours
we were beating about in shoal water on a dangerous coast,
the skipper constantly poring over his charts and evidently
in a very anxious state of mind. It fell to my lot, many
years afterwards, to administer the district to which this
coast belongs, and I then better appreciated the dangers
we had run during those hours.

On the third morning, just as we were going to break-
fast, the man at the masthead shouted, " Brig at anchor,"
and in another hour we had run down to the vessel, sta-
tioned some twenty miles from the mouth of the Hooghly
with pilots to convoy vessels up that exceedingly danger-
ous river ; and a little later we saw the first land on which
our eyes had rested after passing Madeira.

We were all in the highest spirits. The very smell of the

The Hooghly. i 7

land appeared sweeter than anything my nostrils had previ-
ously experienced ; and as the banks of the mighty river
narrowed, and I was able to see farther into the country of
which I was to be one of the governors, my interest knew
no bounds.

We had secured the services of a tug, which before
evening towed us as far as Garden Reach, where it was
necessary to anchor till the morning..

The joy of us new-comers was a little checked during
the night by the attacks of mosquitoes, and in the morn-
ing some of our more delicate companions refused to show
their faces. It was especially trying for those who had
come to join expectant bridegrooms.

One of these was a girl of about six or seven and
twenty, frank, unaffected, and honest, though decidedly
not good-looking, who had been indulging in the most
ardent anticipations of a meeting with her lover, to whom
she had been engaged for seven years. It so happened
that he was the first to arrive on board, having hastened
down on the wings of love (as we supposed) to Garden
Reach, and reached the ship before the tug had taken
us in tow for the last few miles of our journey in the
morning.

How the information got about I don't know, but in less
than half an hour it was known to all on board that this
ardent lover had thus hurried down to persuade his expect-
ant bride to return to England by the next mail steamer.
The reason I never knew. It could not have been mos-
quito bites, for he had evidently come down determined
on this course ; and I fear his conduct was only one of
VOL. I. C

1 8 Life in tJic Mofussil.

the many refutations of the very untrue statement, that
" absence makes the heart grow fonder."

I felt truly sorry for the poor lady, but at the same time
became convinced of the extreme injudiciousness of such
engagements. However, she was firm, and carried her
point, for some days afterwards I saw their marriage an-
nounced in the Calcutta papers ; but it must have taken
some time, at any rate, to efface the recollection of such
an exceedingly disagreeable episode.

Meantime, with the recalcitrant bridegroom moodily
leaning over the side, and the disappointed bride sur-
rounded by a phalanx of sympathizing female friends, we
slowly moved up the majestic river, and leaving the luxu-
riant foliage of Garden Reach behind us, opened out
the stately city of palaces.

The first view of Calcutta is indeed striking — the fine
river, the long line of splendid shipping, the wide
"Maidan" (plain), bounded on two sides by the white
houses with their green Venetian blinds, gleaming under
the bright blue sky of a February morning. It was a
sight welcome to us weary voyagers.

We came to anchor opposite Prinsep's Ghat, an arch
with a flight of steps leading down to the river (all land-
ing places in Bengal are called " ghats ") and were in the
twinkling of an eye surrounded by a multitude of native
boats, the occupants of which were all talking, or rather
screaming, with the full power of their lungs, and making
a noise such as only a native crowd can produce.

I observed among the crowd of dinghies one containing
a number of native commercial agents, or " banians," as

On Shore at Last. 19

they are called, respectably dressed in long white clothes ;
and one young English officer, who had come to meet
some one on board, and was making signs of recogni-
tion to him. In his eagerness to meet his friend, he sprang
from his own "dinghy" on to that next him, and in
doing so capsized that from which he sprang, and all
the white-clothed baboos were in an instant under the
water.

I looked on horror-stricken. The stream was running
some six or seven miles an hour, and in half a minute
or so I observed that the lightly-clad boatmen had
emerged and saved themselves by clinging to boats near
them. The unfortunate baboos, however, were too much
impeded by their long flowing garments to do this, and
I saw once a head with the face perfectly concealed by
white linen appear above the muddy waters, and once an
arm vainly endeavouring to emancipate itself from the
clinging clothes which prevented any effort for life, some
hundred yards down the stream. No one seemed to take
any notice at first, but after half a minute's precious time
lost in jabbering, two out of the fifty boats or more sur-
rounding us did essay to go after the drowning wretches.
Meantime the cause of all this catastrophe had climbed up
the gangway ladder with a beaming countenance, and did
not appear to know that he had consigned to an almost
certain death four or five of his fellow creatures ; for, what
with under-currcnts, eddies, sharks, and alligators, a man
once committed to the tender mercies of the sacred river
is seldom seen again. What became of these baboos I
never knew; for I could do nothing to help them, and the

20 Life in the MqfussiL

bustle of getting on shore soon put all other thoughts
out of my head for the time.

At length, with a feeling of really wild delight, after one
hundred and forty-two days of imprisonment, I once more
put foot on shore.

CHAPTER II.

LIFE AS A STUDENT IN CALCUTTA.

SPENCE'S HOTEL.— FRESH EGGS. — EXAMINATIONS IN NATIVE LAN-
GUAGES.— THE BAITAL PUNSHABINSHATI. — THE "CHUMMERY." —
A CALCUTTA DAY IN THE HOT WEATHER. — THE MALL. — NORTH-
WESTERS.— COMPETITION WALLAHS. — THEATRICALS. — OUR DIN-
NER PARTY. — DISSOLUTION OF " CHUMMERY."— CLUBS.— SNIPE
SHOOTING.— TAKE LEAVE OF CALCUTTA.

A FEW minutes in that curious conveyance, a " palki
gharry " (resembling a palanquin on wheels), sufficed to
convey me to Spence's Hotel ; and I shall not easily forget
the lordly sense of power with which I ordered two fresh
eggs for breakfast. During the last month of our voyage
a hen had confidingly laid an egg, to which each of the
eighteen lady passengers appeared to have some special
claim. But the judicious steward dropped his apple of
discord on deck, and thus avoided a second and very
much exaggerated edition of the Trojan war. But great
was the lamentation over the fall of that egg, and here
was I able to order tr/o at once, and more to follow, if
required.

It was a delightful sense of change and freedom ; and
all the petty strifes and narrow jealousies of the voyage
seemed to have disappeared as if by magic. It was a re-
lief to find that not one of my fellow-passengers had gone
to the same hotel. Indeed, I saw little of them after-

22 Life in the Mofussil.

wards. One day I met Mrs. Vivian in Wilson's shop —
that great emporium on the ground floor of the hotel now
called the Great Eastern. Talbot was following her about
like a tame cat. She bowed to me in the most smiling
manner, and on my returning the salutation, informed me
that she was now Mrs. Talbot ; that they were about to
stay a week or two in Calcutta before going up country
to join his regiment. Would I come and see them ? I
offered my congratulations to Talbot ; and though I must
admit she was nicely dressed and looked well, I felt glad
that she was Mrs. Talbot. I never sawr them afterwards ;
but I feel pretty sure that Ogle and myself were well
out of it.

A few days saw me fairly launched in Calcutta life,
which, for an idle man in the cold weather, is about as plea-
sant a thing as I know. In those days a young civilian
had to pass an examination in Calcutta in two languages
before proceeding to any situation in the interior. These
languages were Persian and Hindi, if the examinee were
appointed to the north-west provinces, Punjaub, or Oudh ;
and Hindustani and Bengali if his future sphere of action
lay in Bengal Proper. The examinations were held
monthly, and we were allowed to take up one language
only at a time, the second not being commenced upon
until the Board of Examiners had certified that we were
sufficiently proficient in the first. During this time we
were nominally under the control of the said Board,
though practically between the intervals of examination
they knew nothing about us and did not interfere with our
movements. I was, like the rest of my compeers, naturally

Native Languages. 23

eager to begin at once upon the administration of the
country, and felt much chagrined at being yet again re-
duced to the status of scholar.

This is all changed now, and young arrivals are sent
at once to the district where they may be appointed, and
not only have an opportunity of seeing how the official
machine works, but of obtaining a practical knowledge of
the language. This latter we certainly could not do in Cal-
cutta. The very books we had to study seemed selected
with a view to prevent this. Hindustani and Bengali fell
to my lot. In the former the " Bagh o Bahar " was our
principal text-book, the language being high-flown Persian
substantives and adjectives, with here and there a Hin-
dustani verb — the delight of the " moonshees," or tutors
appointed by Government, most unpractical of teachers,
but useless for us learners.

A thorough knowledge of the above would perhaps
help me to appear to advantage in an interview with an
educated Mohammedan gentleman, but would be no aid
in the conduct of a criminal case or a local inquiry in a
Behar village. It would probably be far more useful to
civilians who were appointed to the north-west provinces,
but for whom it was not prescribed.

The same remarks apply also to the Bengali text-books.
The chief was entitled " Baital Punshabinshati ; " or, " The
Twenty-five Tales of a Demon " — the vocabulary really
Sanscrit, with Bengali terminations and inflections.

It is a weird book, of which the plot may be roughly
described as follows : — A very pious Hindoo king is at-
tempting to lay a ghost or demon which has taken up its

2 4 Life in tlie Mofussil.

residence in a tree in a burial ground. To effect this he
takes the demon on his back, and the latter consents to go
with him on condition that the king gives a correct answer
to a problem which he shall propose. The king is unsuc-
cessful in guessing the answer until the twenty-fifth pro-
blem is propounded. These problems are in the shape of
stories, and are spun out with a multitude of details quite
irrelevant to the main issue, but a short abstract of one or
two which I recollect will serve to show their nature.

An exceedingly religious king having been blessed with
a wife endowed with all good qualities, and a friend of a
similar character, determined to make a pilgrimage in their
company to a distant shrine. On their way they passed
through a dense forest in which they came upon a temple
sacred to a goddess (whose name I have forgotten). The
king determined to go in and do poojah (say his prayers),
leaving his friend and wife outside. After saying his
prayers he came to the conclusion that life on the whole is
a bore, and that it would be just as well to end it in such a
holy place. He therefore drew his sword, cut off his own
head, and fell dead at the feet of the image of the goddess.
The friend and wife outside wondering at his long absence,
the former went into the temple to see what he was
about. On discovering the dead body he too was struck
with the idea that this is a bad world, and that every one
will accuse him of having killed his friend in order to
obtain his friend's wife. Deciding therefore to avoid all
future trouble by following his friend's example, he cut off
his own head, and fell dead by his side. Finally the wife,
troubled at the long absence of both her companions, en-

Baital Punshabinshati. 25

tered the temple to look after them, and on seeing what
had happened resolved to kill herself too, as life without
her beloved husband was no longer worth having. She was
just preparing to despatch herself with her husband's sword
when the goddess appeared in person, commended her
for her good resolution, and bidding her live, promised to
grant her any boon that she might ask. She begged that
the two dead bodies might be restored to life. " Very
well," said the goddess, " put the heads on to the bodies,"
and disappeared. The wife, in her agitation, fitted the
wrong heads on to the wrong bodies, and when they came
to life as promised, they both claimed her as their wife.

" O king," said the demon, after reciting thus far," whose
wife was she ?"

The king replied, giving his reasons, that she belonged
to that body on which the head of the husband was
fastened ; but the answer was wrong, for the demon got
down from the king's back, and hanged himself up in his
tree again.

In another story a king who has performed his religious
duties with great ardour all his life, is rewarded by the
possession of three of the most delicate wives in the world.
One was so delicate that on one occasion when the king
was sitting by her side playing with a lotus flower, one of
the tendrils fell on her arm and broke it.

The second happened to hear a peasant woman grinding
corn in the hand mill (two round stones between which
the grain is placed), and the sound broke the drum of her
ear.

The third was sitting by the king in the forest one

26 Life in the Mofussil.

moonlight evening, when a moonbeam fell on her cheek
and burned it.

The demon asked which was the most delicate, and the
king, after some pondering, replies, "She on whom the
moonbeam fell ; " but the answer was not correct. In no
case docs the demon supply the right solution when the
king is wrong ; and in all the cases it would be very diffi-
cult to do so on satisfactory grounds.

It is easy to conceive that a study of such a work as
the above did not conduce to a practical knowledge of the
language or of the administration of the laws ; and the
present system is much better, where young administrators
are compelled to learn only what is useful, while at the
same time inducements in the shape of money prizes are
still held out to them to devote what leisure they may have
during the early part of their service to the more finished
acquisition of Indian languages.

To me, and to many others, the study of Hindustani
and Bengali in the above shapes was a very dreary busi-
ness ; and it really was an effort to devote attention to them
at all. A little real work would have enabled me to pass
the examination in each language in two months, or four
months altogether, whereas I lingered in Calcutta for ten,
and some of my contemporaries for eighteen.

Eager as I was to rush up country at starting, when the
time actually came for my departure from Calcutta I was
very loth to go, for I had made many friends whom I was
sorry to leave, and I had also heard many things about the
dulness of life in the interior.

Spence's Hotel, though cheap, was not the most comfort-

The " Chummery " 27

able residence procurable ; and meeting with some friends
of my own age and congenial temperament, we started what
is called a "chummery;" that is, four of us rented a fur-
nished house from a man who had sent his family to the
"hills" for the hot weather and rainy season, and thus
acquired not only the dignity, but also the responsibilities
and anxieties of the status of householders. The owner
was glad to get his house occupied during his absence, and
accepted us as tenants at half the rent he himself paid.

Government allowed us in those days 300rs. a month, or
about £1 a day, and 30rs. or about £3 a month as moon-
shee allowance. This latter amount we never saw, as it
was paid through the Board of Examiners to the moon-
shee we had selected from among those licensed by Govern-
ment, and to whom we granted certificates of regular
attendance (with a very liberal interpretation of the word
regular) during the month. Our united available monthly
income, therefore, from Government was i20ors., and our
actual outgoings for food, wine, house-rent, the wages of
some 30 servants, and the keep of six horses were about
8501's. monthly. This would appear, perhaps, more than
moderate in the eyes of most old Haileybury civilians ;
but the days of the old extravagance had gone by, and the
expression, " he's turned his lakh," meaning, " he owes
more than £ 10,000," would be scarcely intelligible to the
present generation.

Nevertheless it will be seen that to a man having nothing
but his pay, there was not much left for fancy expenditure ;
and to such as went out married it was a great struggle to
make both ends meet. The purchase, too, of horses and

28 Life in tJic Mofussil.

conveyances necessitated an outlay which, in many cases,
compelled the resort to a loan at the very start ; and it was
not easy, until one had got into the quiet and economy of
the " mofussil," or interior, to save anything to pay this off.

My chums, like myself, were all embryo administrators.
One of them, Morrison, was a contemporary of mine at
Oxford ; Green had been at Harrow, and afterwards at a,
private tutor's ; while O'Connor was a graduate of Trinity
College, Dublin. His brogue denoted most unmistakably
the land of his birth.

My long studies on board ship were supposed to have
given me a better knowledge of the language than my
companions, and to my lot therefore fell the management
of the house and the control of the commissariat. To
O'Connor was allotted the supervision of the stable, as all
Irishmen are supposed to know about horses ; and Green's
spirit was too lofty, and Morrison was too dreamy for these
insignificant but necessary details.

Our " khansamar," or head table-servant, was supposed
to know English, or at any rate the English names of the
table necessaries ; and on the morning after we had entered
on possession of our house, he came to inform me that it
was advisable to lay in a small stock of certain kitchen
requisites. " Would I be pleased to make a list, and get
them from the European shops ?"

Accordingly I took my pen, while he, standing with his
hands clasped in the native attitude of deferential respect,
commenced : —

" Makrakurma." " What ?" said I. " Makrakurma," he
repeated.

The Khansamar. 29

I had never heard of any English eatable of this name ;
but he assured me it was very common and absolutely
necessary. " Well," I said, wishing to temporize, " pass on
to the next thing." " Burrumchellee," he said. This was
no better than the first item ; but he insisted that it was
equally well known and equally necessary.

This was very disheartening, and I was much puzzled
what to do, for I did not like to write down these mystic
names and expose my ignorance in an English shop ; and
further I was unwilling to confess to my chums that I had
so utterly failed in my very first attempt at housekeeping.
Finally my interlocutor came to the rescue, saying with a
condescending smile, "Your highness is a great man, and
has probably not paid attention to these matters ; but I
have a cousin in the bazaar who knows English well, and
will, if you approve, write all these things down in English,
and only charge eight annas," equal to is. English.

I was only too glad to accept this compromise, and get
out of my difficulty for one shilling. The next morning
therefore the list was brought to me fairly written out ;
and I discovered that the two mysterious articles were
merely maccaroni and vermicelli, articles that possibly
a brand-new housekeeper would not think of as heading a
list of necessaries. I tried to point out to the khansamar
that it was his faulty pronunciation that had necessitated
the expenditure of is. ; but he either could not or would
not understand, and my Hindustani being very limited, I
was obliged to yield.

Many similar difficulties involved further outlays, until
my progress, both in the language and housekeeping

30 Life in the Mofusstl.

experiences, enabled me to do without the assistance of
the cousin in the bazaar, whom I afterwards discovered to
be no cousin, but an ordinary bazaar writer, and whose
real charge I ascertained to be ^d. for such documents.

My other difficulty was with the sirdar-bearer. The
chief dignitaries among the servants in an Anglo-Bengalee
household are the sirdar-bearer and the khansamar. The
latter, as may be gathered from the facts related above,
supervises the cuisine, the former all matters connected
with the internal economy of the house. He has charge
of the lamps, the linen, etc., and is responsible that the
water-carriers, sweepers, and other subordinate servants
do their duty.

At the commencement of each month he brings in an
account of his expenditure on account of the house, and
also a list of wages due to himself and the servants in his
department. These monthly accounts were the bane of my
existence. The gross amount was always much more than
it ought to have been, and yet it was almost impossible to
eliminate or reduce any special item. Each item, too, was so
ridiculously small in amount that it seemed scarcely worth
while to wrangle about any one in particular. The fact was,
the man's whole leisure time, and he had plenty of it, was
devoted to making up this bill ; and he was prepared with
a most elaborate reply to every possible and probable
objection. I recollect that he always appeared to have
used an enormous amount of string and beeswax, and that
the sweepers continually wanted new brooms and baskets.
Why the baskets should wear out so was always a puzzle to
me. When I became more experienced, I found the wiser

The Sirdar Bearer. 31

plan to be to allow myself to be cheated to a certain ex-
tent, and only to pretend to examine the detailed account,
and if the total appeared to be too extortionate to make
an arbitrary deduction of iors. or so.

Such deductions always caused the most heart-rending
lamentations, assertions of starvation, and impending
death, but they did not last long ; and the bearer, after
being driven from the presence with scorn and a certain
amount of angry words, would appear at the next inter-
view, half an hour afterwards, as grave and decorous as if
nothing had occurred.

The same remarks apply to the khansamar's bill, where,
among other things, the number of eggs consumed in a
month was always perfectly appalling.

Being inexperienced, and at the same time bound to see
that the limited resources of my chums were not extrava-
gantly wasted, the labour of arriving at a satisfactory
settlement of these bills was exceedingly irksome, and did
not, I think, meet with the gratitude it deserved. It was
some consolation, however, to find that O'Connor was just
as much bothered with the stable accounts, and occasion-
ally appeared to be suffering from curry-combs and brushes
on the brain. The amount of salt, too, that horses con-
sume in India is very astonishing.

Another trouble was the constant bickering of our
respective servants.

The servants common to all of us were the derwan, or
door-keeper, a very important person, who prevents the
ingress and egress of doubtful characters, and examines
any suspicious-looking bundles carried out by any servant

32 Life in tJic Mofussil.

of the house, the sirdar-bearer, the khansamar, two water-
carriers (bhcesties), two sweepers, and one cook ; but we
each had our own bearer, or body-servant, and kitmutgar,
or table-servant. It is the custom in India for each per-
son to have his own table-servant ; and when dining out, to
take him with him to wait behind his chair.

There were, of course, among so many hands, sundry
breakages, and many articles, such as spoons, forks, nap-
kins, and towels, mislaid. The khansamar and sirdar-
bearer, in their respective departments, were making con-
stant reclamations, which led to vociferous denials and
recrimination on the part of the eight servants mentioned
above. In our presence they would accuse each other of
carelessness or theft ; out of it, they abused each other's
female relatives. Generally these quarrels blazed hot and
fierce for a quarter of an hour or so, and then died away ;
but occasionally they led to cherished malice and more
serious results. A chummery of four inexperienced young
Englishmen is not a good school for native servants.

Neither the sirdar-bearer or khansamar would steal any-
thing themselves, or allow, if they could help it, any theft
on the part of others in the house. Their profit was made
out of their accounts. The bearers, too, would not steal
from their own masters, for they too had their private
accounts against them ; and though their profits were small
at present, they hoped they would increase as their
masters' salaries increased.

For it is universally the case in Bengal, that as the em-
ployer's salary rises, so does the price of everything pur-
chased by his servants rise also. In all the services the

Servant's Accounts. 33

servants know exactly what pay their masters receive, and
make up their accounts accordingly. It generally happens
that on promotion an official changes his district, and the
servants are therefore able to assert that prices are higher
in the neighbourhood, but it is not so always ; and I recol-
lect a friend who had recently been made a Commissioner
in the district in which he had been in the lower office of
Collector, found that in his khansamar's account for the
succeeding month the price of every article of consump-
tion had considerably increased. On expressing his sur-
prise at this, the man assured him that it was really the
case that the bazaar " nerik," or market rate, had so risen.
He declined to settle the account until he had made in-
quiries, and found that all his neighbours had continued to
pay the same prices as before. This was pointed out to
the khansamar, and he could not deny it, and being driven
into a corner, at length said, " But your honour has become
a Commissioner Sahib." He did not, of course, get his ex-
cess prices on this occasion, but my friend admitted that,
though thus at first successful, his monthly bills increased,
and he could not keep them down.

People who have not been in India may say, " But why
not do your own marketing?" To this I reply, that it
is simply impossible for an English gentleman or lady ;
the climate and the customs of the country absolutely
prevent it.

But though our bearers would not steal from their own

masters, I don't think they had any scruples about taking

what they could from the employers of their companions.

Fear of detection, and its disagreeable consequences, was

VOL. I. D

34 Life in the Mofussil.

the only deterrent. They watched each other very closely,
however, ami hence we were comparatively safe. There
was, I recollect, one serious quarrel between Morrison's and
Green's servants. The latter had been detected by the
former in the act of appropriating some firewood, which he
had collected for the cooking of his mid-day meal. A few
days after, Green missed a gold pencil-case by which he
set much store. A great fuss was made about it, and all
the servants' boxes were searched, without result. Green's
bearer was, of course, suspected ; but, on the grounds men-
tioned above, it was thought improbable that he would
have taken it. Some days afterwards he said to his
master, " Sahib, have you looked in Mr. Morrison's almi-
rah ? (wardrobe)."

" No," said Green, " it isn't very likely Mr. Morrison has
committed a theft."

" But," said his bearer, " it is possible that his servant
may have."

So, with Morrison's permission, his wardrobe was
searched, and among his shirts was found the missing
pencil-case. Morrison was naturally indignant, and told
his bearer to leave his service at once. The man in vain
asserted his innocence, and attributed the charge to enmity
about the stolen wood above mentioned. It did not occur
to us that there could be any connection between the two ;
but it appeared that he was right, for shortly after his
dismissal the khansamar came to me with an air of impor-
tant mystery, saying that Jeeboo wished to speak to me.

Jeeboo, I should explain, was the item in the house
which answers to the cat at home. He was a relative of

A Servant's Quarrel. 35

one of the kitmutgars, who had been admitted to the house
without payment of salary, for the purpose of learning his
duties as a table servant ; and all sins of omission and
commission of the table department, such as broken
plates, torn napkins, lost dusters, were in the first instance
laid to his charge — probably, in many cases, with justice ;
we had christened him the " Plate-smasher."

I told the khansamar to admit him, and he then in-
formed me that in the morning before the search of Morri-
son's wardrobe he had been sent upstairs to fetch a\:up and
saucer which had been left in Morrison's room, and had
found Green's bearer standing by the wardrobe. Green's
bearer was then confronted with him, and was evidently
taken aback at this unexpected piece of evidence. It was
clear that the boy had no hostility to Green's man, and
further, O'Connor suddenly recollected that he had seen
Green's man coming out of Morrison's room, but had not
thought of it further at the time. This raised such a strong
presumption in favour of the innocence of Morrison's
bearer that messengers were at once sent to recall him,
and Green's servant dismissed with ignominy, and some
very scornful remarks in bad Hindustani from Green,
which, I am bound to admit, did not appear to have very
much effect.

It grieves me to relate that the plate-smasher's connec-
tion with us terminated soon after, almost equally disas-
trously. It was the custom at the close of dinner to
remove the lamp just as we were about to leave the table,
and carry it into the drawing-room. The lamp stood in
the centre of the table, under the punkah, a semicircular

36 Life in the Mofussil.

space being cut in the fringe of this latter in order to
enable it to be pulled without interfering with the former.
The punkah is a framework of canvas about a foot and a
half in breadth, and of length proportional to the room in
which it is suspended. To the framework is attached a
fringe of thick holland, about a foot in breadth, and the
whole is pulled by a rope attached to its centre and passed
through a hole in the wall. The puller (punkah-wallah),
stands in the adjoining room, and is of course unable to
see what is going on in the room in which the punkah is
swinging to and fro. He pulls on mechanically to cool his
masters until told to stop. Before removing the lamp, it
was necessary to call out to the punkah-wallah to stop. On
the evening in question, the " plate-smasher," anxious, I
presume, to show himself useful, raised the lamp without
taking the precaution previously mentioned. The punkah
swung on monotonously, and the result was a crash, total
darkness, and a strong smell of castor oil. We sprang to
our feet simultaneously, actuated by a common thirst for
vengeance; but the "plate-smasher " had disappeared. Our
thoughts next turned to the relative who had introduced
him ; but he also had fled, and we never saw either of them
again, though a small amount of wages was due to the
latter. Yet, notwithstanding these and similar worries, we
had on the whole a sufficiently pleasant time in Calcutta.

In those days it was not thought necessary that the head
of the Government should seek the cool fastnesses of
Simla during the hot season and rains, and take with him
all the fortunate officials attached to the Government of
India, the Foreign and Home Offices, and many others.

"A Day of Calcutta Life." 2,7

It is doubtless more pleasant; but beyond this I never could
see any reason for the move. In former days the work
went on equally well, even though carried on in the climate
of Lower Bengal. No one will deny that Lower Bengal
civilians have plenty to do, and yet it has never occurred
to any one that they require such a change. It seems to
me, though perhaps I look at it from a very local point of
view, that it is just as though the English Cabinet should
go to Malta during the winter months and govern England
thence. Some of those who go have admitted to me
that great delay and confusion is caused by the trans-
mission of bundles of correspondence. For three weeks
before the start from Calcutta, a multitude of matters
were at a standstill, because a portion of the correspon-
dence connected with them had "gone on;" and three weeks
after the return the result was the same, because the
bundles had not come back. However, the fact that delay
and confusion must occur in such a case scarcely requires
proof.

In those days, then, Calcutta, though badly drained and
with no proper water supply, retained a large portion of its
European society during the year, and the contrast between
the social atmosphere during the winter months and those
of the hot and rainy seasons was not so great as it is now.
Dinners and even dances went on ; and we waltzed away
pluckily at Government House on the 24th May in honour
of Her Most Gracious Majesty. It was not cool, I must
admit, and artificial complexions would have fared badly.

The description of one day will suffice for most others.
Up between 5.30 and 6 a.m., and after " chota haziri," or

3S Life in the Mofussil.

little breakfast, consisting of coffee and toast, a canter on
the " Maidan," the extensive plain, round two sides of
which the European portion of Calcutta is built ; back to
bathe and breakfast ; after which, moonshees till 12 ; then
calls from 12 to 2 p.m., then lunch (if at home) ; sleep,
books, or whist, till 5 p.m. ; then a drive to the racket court,
where play till 7, at which hour one's riding horse was
brought down ; and a gallop across the Maidan to the
Eden Gardens, with music and conversation with all the
" world," who had turned out to enjoy the cool of the
evening, made a pleasant finish to the day.

The Mall, the Rotten Row of Calcutta, is quite unique ;
and in its own style, I should say, unsurpassed. The
road on which the carriages pass up and down runs
between the fine river Hooghly on the one side and the
Maidan on the other. To the north and east are
Government House, the Town Hall, the Esplanade, and
the Chowringhee mansions, which have given the place the
name of the " City of Palaces," and I think, from the coup
doeil afforded, not undeservedly. Close to the road are
moored fine ships from all parts of the world, of many
thousand tons burden, while the opposite bank is green
with foliage throughout the year. The assemblage of
vehicles is, it is true, somewhat motley, for there are no
exclusive rules here ; and the Governor General's carnage
in all its splendour, may be jostled by the hired " palki
gharry " with its two wretched ponies, rope harness, nearly
naked driver, and wheels whose sinuous motions impress
one with the idea that they must come off at the next
revolution, and a freight of drunken sailors vociferating

The Eden Gardens. 39

sonnets to their sweethearts in a manner anything but
harmonious.

Parallel to the carriages, and separated from them only
by a wooden railing, figure the riders ; and the amount
of salutation rendered necessary by this proximity is
destructive to the brims of many hats. The fort, of
which the Maidan forms the " glacis," is half-way down
the drive ; officers are obliged to appear in uniform, and
this, in conjunction with the varied costumes of the natives
of all descriptions, affords a combination of colour which
makes the whole scene very striking.

The Eden Gardens border the northern portion of the
drive. Though not extensive, they are laid out with con-
siderable horticultural skill ; and a large grass plat close
to the band-stand is provided for a promenade. Here, as
the short twilight fails, it is the custom for the occupants
of the various carriages, and the riders, to collect and
walk up and down, while listening to good military music.
The place is prettily lighted with lamps ; and, though
decorum reigns supreme, the whole thing brings back a
faint flavour of the Chateau des Fleurs of Paris. I once
had occasion to take a young American girl, who had got
thus far on a journey round the world from New York vid
San Francisco, to this promenade, and she told me it had
impressed her more pleasingly than anything she had
hitherto seen.

Here too, on the hot May evenings, all linger to catch
the latest breath of the southerly breeze, which comes up
from the sea, heedless of the black arched cloud gathering
in the west, portending the speedy advent of one of those

40 Life in the Mofussil.

storms known all over Bengal as nor'-westers. A remark-
able feature in these is, that in whatever part of the sky
they may gather, they invariably burst from the north-
west. The southerly breeze blows steadily, but the black
cloud still comes on and on, until there is a sudden lull,
and a chill air from the north-west takes the place of the
soft sea-born wind. This is the signal for a general run to
carriages and horses ; there is a perfect stampede of eques-
trians over the plain. And now comes a mighty rush of
wind, every particle of dust on the surface of the thirsty
ground seems to be whirled into the air, down comes the
rain, in a few minutes the Maidan looks like a lake, the
lightning keeps up a continuous flare, and the thunder
crashes and roars without one half-second's cessation
The wind is often so strong that it is impossible to raise
the hood of buggy or barouche, and ladies' dresses come
badly out of this conflict of the elements. Conveyances
are occasionally blown completely over ; and young horses
not rarely bring their riders to grief in the general excite-
ment and confusion.

In one of these storms the wife of one of the highest
functionaries in Calcutta was blown positively off her
horse into the ditch bythe jail, near the south-east corner
of the Maidan. She had separated from her companions
in the darkness, and no one at the moment knew what
had become of her. The storm, as is usual, passed over in
a little more than half an hour ; and two men coming by
in a buggy became conscious of a lady in riding costume
sitting disconsolately in the ditch. They pulled up and
offered to assist her home, not knowing who she was ;

Nor- Westers. 4 1

but her nerves had been so upset by the fright she had
undergone that she could not recollect her residence
or even her name. At their wits' end what to do, they
finally took her to the General Hospital, where, after a
couple of hours' rest, her memory returned, and she was
able to give directions and be sent home, whither her horse
had found its way some time previously, causing much
alarm to her husband and family.

In the Eden Gardens O'Connor was in his glory. Per-
sonally, I must admit that, meeting the same people day
after day, I used to find my powers of conversation some-
what flag. But O'Connor was like the "brook." One
objectionable point about him was, that he could not
modulate his voice ; and some of his tenderest remarks
were audible to a great many ears besides that for which
they were intended. Some of these appeared to me rather
vapid ; but there was an Irish absence of bashfulness about
him which enabled him to pull through all kinds of
awkward situations ; and certainly the ladies to whom he
addressed his conversation did not seem displeased. My
experience teaches me that ladies prefer a talker, how-
ever vapid, to a silent man ; and on my once asking a
middle-aged friend of mine, a keen observer, how it was
that girls whom I really thought intelligent could enjoy
this kind of conversation, he replied, " Women like being
talked to ; it is analogous to patting a little dog," and 'I
cannot help thinking he was right. Men, however, were not
so complacent ; and I heard many remarks that were by
no means complimentary to my fluent chum.

Some of these doubtless originated in the strong preju-

4- Life in the Mofussil.

dice that still existed against Competition Wallahs, as we
were called, who had obtained our appointments by com-
petitive examination. It was not unnatural that members
of old Indian families of either service should look upon
us as intruders, who had taken out of the mouths of their
children the bread that was their legitimate due. But this
prejudice led them to somewhat unreasonable conclusions.

In their eyes, because a man had not been nominated
by a Director and educated at Haileybury, it necessarily
followed that he was of low birth and vulgar mind and
manners ; that he could not ride or shoot ; in fact, that he
was a mere bookworm, devoid of all physical energy.
Wallahs are now so numerous that they are quite able to
hold their own ; but this general idea still exists, though in
a less pronounced form.

From what I have learned of the Haileybury regime, it
seems to me that the students there were decidedly not
likely to be entitled to the sobriquet of "bookworms;"
but yet I have never been able to understand why they
should, as a necessary consequence, be able to ride and
shoot so much better than those educated elsewhere — why
they should be so much more refined than the products of
Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge. But this was
only an article of faith with them, and had no more effect
on their practice than articles of faith generally exercise.
Though they thought of us thus as a class, they treated us
well as individuals ; and I received nothing but kindness
from members of my own service. It is true I was often
told, as doubtless the majority of my contemporaries have
been told, that I was not like an ordinary Wallah ; but this

Calling. 43

was by way of a compliment. And it must be admitted
that some of the new comers, who had not been at a public
school or a University, but had scraped through with the
aid of crammers, did not possess all the qualities desirable ;
but were there no black sheep among the Haileybury
flock ?

The knowledge, too, of the existence of this prejudice
naturally made Wallahs a little shy on their arrival in
Calcutta ; but I freely acknowledge that when we did
emerge from our reserve, we were kindly and hospitably
received.

Calling hours in Calcutta are from 12 to 2 p.m. 2 p.m.
is the luncheon hour, and after that ladies not unusually,
in the hot weather, divest themselves of all superfluous
clothing, and keep as cool and quiet as they can until
the time for the evening drive. The male sex, except
in the case of such idlers as ourselves and a few military
men, were all at office, so there was really not much temp-
tation to keep them in their drawing-rooms.

It is also the Indian custom that the new comers should
call on the old residents. The new comers are generally
young men and shy ; and it is their habit to call in pairs,
by way of supporting each other. This is particularly be-
wildering to the recipients of the visit ; for as two cards of
two strange men are sent in simultaneously, it is difficult
for the hostess to distinguish which is which. I very soon
discontinued this custom ; for having called at one house in
company with Green, I soon after received and accepted
an invitation to dine there. My hostess very naively ex-
pressed surprise at my appearance, stating that she thought

44 Life in the Mofussil.

my companion had been Mr. Gordon. This was gauche
on her part, but not the less disagreeable to me.

O'Connor did an immense amount of calling, chiefly
alone ; but there was one house to which he generally in-
duced me to accompany him — that of some very pleasant
people named Carter — father, mother, and daughter. He
held a high civil appointment, and their house was one of
the most genial and hospitable in the place. Miss Carter
was decidedly pretty and very lively. She seemed to take
pleasure in O'Connor's society; at any rate she was amused
with him, and I was somehow generally told off to make
conversation with Mrs. Carter, not at all an unpleasant
task, though perhaps not quite so nice a role as O'Connor
had taken for himself. The whole of our chummery
gradually became very intimate there ; and at length, when
we were lunching there one day, it was decided that we
should get up some private theatricals. O'Connor was
specially keen about this ; and Miss Carter and a friend of
hers, a Miss Rawlins, were to take the ladies' parts. Green
and Morrison were also enlisted, and to me, who had had
some little experience of acting at home, fell the thankless
task of stage-manager.

The Carters gave up their drawing-room, and for a time
things went swimmingly. O'Connor did a deal of flirting
with Miss Carter ; though I thought I perceived that she
paid a great deal more attention to Green, whenever he
condescended to make himself agreeable. Three days
before the date fixed for the performance. Miss Rawlins
fell ill, Mrs. Carter objected to allow her daughter to be the
only lady acting, and it seemed likely that the whole thing

Private Theatricals. 45

would fall through. Suddenly it occurred to the irre-
pressible O'Connor that I would make a capital lady. I
admit I had a good complexion, and no whiskers ; but
then I was far too tall, and I possessed a promising
moustache which I much cherished. At first, I firmly
declined the arrangement ; but the Carters got me to
dinner there, and bullied me so unmercifully about my
selfishness that I gave way, and consented to take the
part of Annie in " Little Toddlekins."

The theatricals finally came off, with the result that is
usual in such cases. All the actors thought they had gone
off splendidly ; and the audience were good enough to
applaud, and say they thought so too. The absence of
ladies made them much less interesting ; this we all ad-
mitted afterwards in the quiet of our own house ; and then
O'Connor, who seemed to long for further excitement, and
was also anxious to follow up the impression he supposed
that he had made on the Carters, propounded the auda-
cious suggestion that we should have a ladies' party,
i.e., a dinner party, at which some of the guests should
be ladies.

This idea I received with the scorn I supposed that it
merited ; but to my surprise Green accepted the proposition
very favourably, and Morrison didn't care a fig which way
the matter was decided. So finally invitations were issued
to the Carters, parents and daughter, to Miss Rawlins and
her father, Colonel Rawlins, and accepted.

The interval between this and the date of the entertain-
ment was a time of some anxiety to me ; for though our
house was a good one, and we had all the necessary means

46 Life in the Mofussil.

at command, yet I felt that our servants were not quite
reliable, as indeed young bachelors' servants seldom are,
and I had a presentiment that some contretemps would
occur. O'Connor devoted himself to the supply of bou-
quets, something very suggestive being procured for Miss
Carter. For my part, I acceded to all the demands of the
khansamar, the chief of which were, two fowls per head
for each person dining, for the stock of the soup, plus two
for the pot ; a " ticca " (hired) cook, a " ticca " " mesalchi,"
or plate-washer, to assist our own men, and various articles
in tins and bottles.

It was now well on in the rainy season, when no vege-
tables or fruits are procurable, and it was necessary to eke
out the limited supplies of the country with articles ob-
tained from Europe in hermetically sealed tins or bottles.
Every conceivable thing is so procurable, and the native
servants hold them in high estimation. There is a story
of a man who had recently returned from furlough telling
a very worthy half-caste lady who had never seen Eng-
land, that he had had the honour of dining with the Queen
during his absence ; on which she remarked, "Ah ! every-
thing in tin, I presume." Her ideas evidently coincided
with those of her servants.

My experience of Calcutta dinners at that time was, that
they very much resembled each other. They were served
a la Russe. The centre piece of the table was invariably
a large citron melon (called by the natives, "batavee
nimbo") with its thick rind cut into ornamental shapes ;
and the fish almost always tinned salmon. The table
was prettily adorned with flowers, for the natives have a

A Dinner Party. 47

wonderful natural taste for combinations of colour ; and
a curious fact about Calcutta was, that though very few
people had gardens, everybody had a gardener. Whence
the flowers are procured is to this day a mystery.

On looking into the dining-room before the arrival of
our guests, I thought the table looked very much like
other people's, whereat I felt contented.

At length the critical moment arrived when we were all
seated at table, at one end myself, flanked by Mrs. Carter,
and Colonel Rawlins, at the other Green, with Miss Carter
on his right and her father on his left. He had somehow
successfully asserted his right to take her down; but
O'Connor was consoled by having a seat next her. I was a
prey to the hundred and one anxieties that fill the minds
of young married women on such occasions ; and these were
not alleviated by observing that Mrs. Carter appeared not
to swallow her soup, but to make a show of doing so ; while
Rawlins, after tasting a spoonful, growled to his servant,
who was standing behind him, " Isko lejao, jaldi " (Take
this away quickly). On my own turn arriving, I found to my
indescribable horror that there was a marked flavour of
castor oil in the concoction ; and on looking round the table
it was clear that every one else had discovered it also.

The khansamar was standing by the sideboard with a self-
satisfied look, totally unconscious that anything was wrong;
and Green had to tell him a second time very perempto-
rily to take everybody's soup away, before he appeared
to .conceive the possibility that there was some reason
for its not being drunk. The horrible mystery was after-
wards explained. It is the custom in all Indian kitchens

48 Life in the Mo/ussil.

to strain the soup through a duster, and every day the
bearer used to give out a clean duster for the purpose. It
was also the custom in our house to burn castor oil in the
lamps. It appeared that the duty of straining the soup
had been delegated to the wretched " ticca " cook, who had
taken for the purpose a duster that had been already used
for cleaning the lamps, and hence the communicated
flavour. This was rather trying ; but everybody was
anxious to make the best of matters, and the rest of the
dinner proceeded smoothly enough until the sweets were
served. Among other dishes was one of preserved green-
gages, with a lot of fluffy white cream at the top, of which
I felt a little proud, and was somewhat disconcerted that
Mrs. Carter refused it when offered to her. It was next
handed to old Rawlins, who helped himself pretty liber-
ally ; but no sooner had he tasted it than he flung himself
back in his chair with the exclamation, " Olives, by God."
Alas ! it was too true. A bottle of preserved greengages
and another of remarkably fine Spanish olives had been
given out for the occasion ; and now for the first time
I noticed the greengages lying innocently in a cut-glass
dish among the dessert.

This was too much for Carter's power of self-restraint,
and he burst into a loud laugh, in which finally all
assembled joined. It was the best way of getting over it,
though I saw in prospect some very pretty stories about
the Wallahs' dinner-party ; and for three weeks or a month
afterwards I was frequently consulted as to the merits of
"olive tarts."

The evening passed off pretty well. O'Connor and

United Service Clnb. 49

Green were both musical, and the latter sang one or two
duets with Miss Carter, and made very decided running.
O'Connor en revanche sang, accompanying himself, —

" If she be not fair to me,
What care I how fair she be ? "

and was finally allowed to take Miss Carter down to her
carriage.

Certainly after this our chummery was not so united as
it had been. O'Connor confided to me that he thought
Green intensely conceited ; while Green intimated his
opinion that O'Connor was exceedingly common in man-
ner, and could not have mixed much in society before
coming to Calcutta.

This was about the first week in August ; and two or
three days after O'Connor received his certificate from the
Board of Examiners of passing in his second language,
which would necessitate his proceeding to his station in
the interior very shortly. About the same time we
received information that our landlord was about to return
from the hills, and so we were driven to seek quarters
elsewhere.

Green and I had been elected members of the United
Service Club, — a very excellent institution, where, con-
sidering the comforts available, a bachelor can live more
enonomically than anywhere else in Calcutta. It was
formerly exclusively for military men ; but they got into
difficulties, and a lot of civilians joined it, thus prevent-
ing its dissolution, while the amalgamation proved very
pleasant socially. The Club consists of a number of fine
houses, in one of which are the public rooms, while the
VOL. I. E

5<d Life in the Mofussil.

others arc set apart for chambers for members residing
permanently in Calcutta, and sleeping apartments for those
only making a short stay. Stabling is also available.
The rent of these is moderate ; and I found that my Club
bill, including eating and drinking, seldom exceeded 200
rupees monthly. This was much more economical than
the chummery.

Morrison and O'Connor had found a resting-place else-
where. The latter came to dine with me one evening, and
over a cigar afterwards began to express regret at leaving
Calcutta, and some fears as to the dulness of life alone
in the Mofussil. I was somewhat interested as I under-
stood his drift, and further amused when he proceeded to
show a curiosity about the price of table-cloths, plated
ware, and other articles of domestic economy.

Alas that all this provident foresight should be need-
less ! Two days afterwards, all Calcutta knew he was a
rejected suitor of Miss Carter's. He was so crestfallen that
I really felt sincere sympathy with him, though this was
somewhat abated when I discovered that he attributed
his failure, at any rate in part, to the castor-oil soup and
the olive tart.

Early in September he left for the Mofussil, and I saw no
more of him for a long time. But some three years after
I had a letter from Green, who was then at Delhi, and the
father of two children, Miss Carter having consented to
become Mrs. Green before the Christmas following the
above narrated events. He told me that O'Connor had
gone up to Delhi on a month's " privilege " leave, and had
called at his house during; his absence at office. His wife

A Rejected Suitor. 5 r

had received him cordially, and, with natural matronly
pride, sent for her two children to show him. " Ah," said
O'Connor, with a deep sigh, on seeing them, "they ought
to have been mine."

The last three months of my stay in Calcutta passed
very pleasantly. I became a member also of the Bengal
Club, conducted on principles similar to those of the
United Service, but open to men not in the services. This
was frequented by the leading members of the mercan-
tile community and the learned professions, with a good
sprinkling of civilians. It was interesting, though not
always satisfactory, to know what non-officials thought of
official proceedings; and opinions were expressed here with
very considerable freedom. Being up to this time in no
way connected with any acts brought under criticism, I
was able to listen with perfect impartiality ; and the
impression I received was, that, speaking generally, all
official proceedings were wrong, at least from the point of
view of non-officials.

On the whole, at this club there was more luxury, every-
thing was more expensive, the whist points were higher,
and there was generally a more free expenditure of money
than at the other ; and I think it was more lively. On
coming back to Calcutta a dozen years afterwards, I found
this still to be the case.

Towards the end of September the snipe begin to come
in in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, and this makes a
very great difference in the daily life of the man of leisure,
such as I was. I speedily became acquainted with a good
"shikarree," who knew every inch of ground within a

52 Life in the Mofussil.

radius of twenty miles round, and seldom took me out
without affording me a chance of making a full bag.
Snipe are very particular, and sometimes very capricious, in
their choice of ground ; and occasionally one may walk
for hours without seeing a bird, and at another time bag
sixteen or twenty brace without moving 200 yards. The
shikarrees are exceedingly clever in discovering their
favourite haunts, and thus save one much weary wading
through slush above one's knees, an hour of which, with a
hot October sun overhead, is a very serious matter. They
generally have one or two boys with them who are better
than any retrievers at picking up the dead game. I
suppose the snipe-shooting round Calcutta is as good as
any in the world ; and I have known four guns bring back,
after five hours' shooting, 1 50 brace of snipe. They lie
best between 11.30 and 2.30, the very hottest part of the
day ; and the glare of the sun on the water in the rice
fields is very trying both to the eyes and the skin of
the face. Many a man's eyesight has suffered from hist
devotion to this fascinating sport ; and I felt very pain-
fully the sacrifice of my moustache for the sake of those
confounded theatricals, as I lost the whole of the skin
from both my lips, and they were in a very bad state for
some time. On the whole, I should say that before
November the game is scarcely worth the candle, for till
then the sun is intensely hot, and the birds are not very
numerous ; but after that there is, I think, compensation
for all risk.

About this time, too, military men who had taken leave
to Cashmir and other parts beyond the hills on " urgent

Snipe Shooting. 53

private affairs," began to return with wonderful accounts
of the " ibex" and other rare animals they had slaughtered,
stirring up a keen desire of sport in the breasts of the less
fortunate listeners.

There was a freshness in the mornings and evenings
which seemed to dispel, both in man and beast — that is to
say, European man — the languor induced by the hot
weather and the rainy season ; and life became altogether
more animated. At length, in December, the certificate
reached me from the examiners, announcing that I had
passed in my second language, Bengali, and was therefore
fitted for service in the interior. ^/

In those days, when the miles of railway opened in
the country were "easily counted" (evapiO^ot), the old
rules relating to the time allowed for joining stations were
still in force; and these gave me one week for preparation
and some thirty-five days or more for the journey, the
district to which I was appointed " Assistant Magistrate
and Collector" being between 350 and 400 miles from
Calcutta, and the rate of progress demanded only ten
miles a day. The railway helped me as far as Bhaugul-
pore, considerably more than half-way on my road ; and
as this portion of my journey would only occupy one
day, I was enabled to spend the time thus saved in
Calcutta, to play in one or two cricket-matches, assist at
Green's wedding, and eat my Christmas dinner in a house
where I left a portion of my heart, and where the leave-
taking was the most serious thing I went through during
this sojourn in the Indian metropolis.

CHAPTER III.

JOURNEY UP COUNTRY.

BHAUGULPORE. — A MOFUSSIL BUNGALOW. — HAPPY-GO-LUCKY PRO-
GRESS TO PATNA. — STAY AT PATNA.

On the 26th of December, in the early morning, with a
couple of cart-loads of baggage, two horses, and four
servants, I found myself at the Howrah terminus of the
E. B. Railway, and by 8 a.m. was rolling along through
the flat swamps of the Hooghly district, disclosing wide-
spreading and luxuriant rice crops, and many a snipey bit
which it was irritating not to be able to try.

My destination was Tirhoot, a district lying between the
boundaries of the Nepal kingdom and the Ganges. I had
been persuaded to apply for this by a friend whose ac-
quaintance I had made at the Eton dinner given by Lord
Canning at Government House, on the great Eton anni-
versary, the 4th of June, and where I had the honour of
occupying one end of the table, as junior Etonian present.
My friend, Bertram by name, had been appointed as
Additional Judge of the District, and had taken and
furnished a large house at Mozufferpore, the capital
town, as he expected to remain there some time, and had
proceeded to join his appointment about a month before
I left Calcutta. As far as Bhaugulpore my route was
easv enough ; but after that I had to trust to chance

A Mofussil Bungalow . 55

about getting over the remaining 130 or 140 miles of my
journey. ^

The train rolled on through vast alluvial plains till, about
3 or 4 in the afternoon, we came among the jungle-covered
hills of Rajmahal. They looked wild and lonely, the
jungle growing densely on each side of the rail ; and as
the shades of evening closed in, I began to feel very solitary
and full of regret for the animated though idle life I had left
behind me. A retrospect showed me that I had spent ten
months in acquiring a mere smattering of the languages,
and that I had learned nothing of the manners and cus-
toms of the natives among whom my future life was to be
spent, and no more of the active duties I had to perform,
while I had got through a certain amount of money. I had
certainly made many friends ; but I was now leaving them
all, and the chances were that scarcely any of them would
be left in Calcutta when I might next revisit it, such is the
migratory character of Anglo-Indian society.

However, these somewhat cheerless reflections were
agreeably put an end to by my arrival at Bhaugulpore,
where a contemporary fellow-civilian met me, and hurried
me off to his bungalow with eager hospitality. He had
passed his examinations some three months previously,
and had been exercising the powers of an Assistant Magis-
trate and Collector for that period. He had come out
to India married, and seemed to enjoy considerable do-
mestic happiness with very limited accommodation. His
habitation was a bungalow with a thatched roof, very high
in the centre, and sloping, so as to cover a good-sized area.
The interior of this area was occupied by three largish

56 Life in the Mofussil.

rooms, while a strip some ten or twelve feet in width,
running all round the four sides of these, formed a very
spacious verandah. This verandah was broken up into
various partitions on one side of the house by walls of
bamboo matting, which made several convenient small
rooms. The servants all lived in outhouses made of
"cutcha pucka" masonry; that is, bricks cemented together
with mud, and thatched roofs. The kitchen and stables
were of similar construction.

For my accommodation a tent borrowed from the
Magistrate had been erected, and so I passed my first
night under canvas. During and after dinner, my host
regaled me with an account of the many and various duties
he had to perform ; and before the evening was over I
became quite cheered with a sense of my own importance,
and eager to reach the tract of country where my personal
official powers would commence. I was a little surprised
the next day to find that his presence was not necessary
at Cutcherry, and that he would be able to devote himself
to me ; but I afterwards discovered that all young civilians,
who really have very little official work — and very properly
so — for the first six months after joining their stations, are
most anxious to impress upon others the importance of
their duties. I fell into the same way myself; and I recol-
lect a friend, who had gone up to the North-west Provinces
some two months before this, writing to me that the work
was " crushing." All the same, I was very glad to have
the benefit of his three months' Mofussil experience to
assist me in forwarding my traps to Mozufferpore, and in
helping me on myself; for in most parts of India it is even

Chance Progi-ess. 57

more necessary to "speed the parting" than "welcome the
coming guest."

After a great deal of jabbering four "bailgarees" (bul-
lock carts) were engaged for some very moderate sum,
half of which had to be paid in advance, to take all but
the things I wanted for use on my journey, direct to
Mozufferpore, which they hoped to reach in ten days ; and
my horses started with them. They left about mid-day,
and we were free to devote the afternoon to seeing the
station, by which I mean the civil station of Bhaugulpore,
and not the railway terminus.

At the Collector's house we found a lot of people playing
quoits before sunset, among them the Resident Railway
Engineer, who said he could send me by " trolly " to
Jamalpore, some thirty miles along the line (in course of
construction) next day, and further, give me a letter to
the next engineer. This suited me exactly.

We had a very pleasant evening at the Collector's,
who gave us hospitality in the shape of dinner ; and/ the
next morning at sunrise I started to walk over a short
break in the railway, and before nine was being pushed
along by coolies at the rate of six miles an hour. / It was a
lovely day, and the mode of progression very pleasant ; and
further, I was surprised at the endurance of our propellers,
who appeared able to keep up their efforts at this pace
for any distance^ I found a young officer, who was making
his way north-westward as best he could, had also been
accommodated with a seat on the trolly, and he proved a
very pleasant companion.

All went smoothly till we reached a place called Sultan-

5S Life in the Mofussil.

gunge, where there was a break in the line, and from which
point our coolies said they must take back the trolly, as
they had orders to do so. On this a certain babel of
tongues arose, to which my companion contributed some
very vigorous English, when suddenly a European under-
official of the line appeared, and told us that an engine
was going on to Jamalpore about three in the afternoon,
and we could get on that. This settled matters satis-
factorily, and shortly after sunset I proceeded to climb the
hill through which the Jamalpore tunnel runs, and at the
top of which my host for the night resided. My com-
panion walked on into the town of Monghyr, only four
miles distant, where he had friends.

At the house on the hill I was received as if I had been
an intimate friend of the family. My host was married,
and all the rooms in his bungalow were occupied, but a
portion of the verandah was quickly converted into a room
by the erection of some bamboo mats, in which I was
enabled to pass the night very comfortably. The next
day was Sunday and wet ; and as my host had somewhat
Sabbatical tendencies my departure was postponed until
the Monday morning. The desire of entering upon my
official duties was now strong within me, and I found this
delay very irksome, to say nothing of the natural dulness
of a wet Sunday in a Mofussil bungalow. Early on the
Monday I was forwarded by "trolly" to the next engineer's;
but though I reached this by the middle of the day, my
next host, possibly with the desire of a companion for
dinner, let me understand that I could by no means get
forward until the following day. He made himself very

Neiv Years Eve at Malpore. 59

agreeable, however, and had a good many stories to tell
of encounters with tigers, which are very numerous in
the jungly hills through which the line runs. They ap-
peared to be very fond of coming on the line itself;
but being very inexperienced in these matters I felt
some of the incredulity of ignorance as to some of his
details.

The next day, the 31st of December, I rode five miles
on a rather vicious pony to a large river, the Joas, over
which I was ferried, the bridge not being completed, and
on the other side found the next engineer, who had come
to look at the works. He had a horse and a palanquin
with him, but made the latter over to me, and sent me
in it to his house at Malpore, some sixteen miles fur-
ther, and said he would follow on horseback. We arrived
at his house almost simultaneously and found the regular
Mofussil one o'clock breakfast awaiting us, for which I at
any rate had a keen appetite. My host was really the
prince of good fellows ; as to going any further that day,
it was, he said, simply out of the question. It was the last
day of the old year ; some neighbouring engineers were
coming to dinner, and I must assist in welcoming in
the 1st of January. He had a very fair billiard table, and
the afternoon passed by no means disagreeably.

About six the guests arrived — four engineers and the
doctor of that part of the line. Two of the former and
the latter were Scotchmen, as might have been expected ;
indeed such a proportion of that nationality, under the
circumstances, may be considered small. Their appearance
was not what one would call polished, for there were no

6o Lift in the Mofussil.

European ladies within a pretty good circumference, and
men do not dress for each other. However, they were all
men of education, and had seen professional service in
main- parts of the world. The doctor, a very weather-
beaten old fellow, had been everywhere ; and his conver-
sation was both instructive and amusing. I wish I could
recollect some of it, but after dinner the talk became some-
what fast and furious.

At midnight we welcomed in the New Year, and after
singing " Auld lang syne," with more vigour than tune,
I turned into a palanquin belonging to my host, which
was to convey me some nine miles to the house of one
of the guests, where his palki and bearers would be at
my service. At this place, called Chunar, I arrived
between two and three in the morning ; and the bearers,
with the usual insouciance of natives, set the palki down
on the left edge of the road, which was an embanked one,
with deep ditches on both sides. They there woke me
suddenly by rapping on the outside of the palki, and
intimated that I must get out and change mine for
that of the " Chunar Sahib." I opened by chance the
left-hand sliding doors, got out hastily in the dark, and
rolled at once into the ditch. It was luckily quite dry ;
but the shock was rather startling, and I gave one of my
knees a sprain which I felt for months afterwards. This
was, I believe, the only contretemps that befell me on this
happy-go-lucky journey.

I was naturally very angry, and this induced the coolies
to bestir themselves more than they otherwise would, to
get the other palki ready, so that in a very short time I

An Accident. 61

was again en route for Barh, my next halting-place,
about seventeen miles distant.

This I reached about 8 a.m., and was deposited at the
bungalow of the deputy magistrate, who received me with
hospitality similar to that I had experienced all along. He
had been in the army, but had come to the conclusion that
the peaceful life of a civilian, even though in the " uncove-
nanted " service, was preferable to the harassments of war ;
and so some years previously, when examinations had not
been thought of, and such transfers were easily made, had
succeeded in getting the exchange he desired, and seemed,
I thought, contented.

To me Barh appeared the dullest place that it was
possible for a civilized being to inhabit. It is a good-
sized native town on the right bank of the Ganges,
some forty-two miles from Patna. There was one other
European official there, a subordinate in the Opium De-
partment, and this was all the society he and his wife had.
The social qualifications of natives are, in relation to Euro-
peans "nil/' as I shall perhaps be able to show hereafter.
Being the ist of January, it was a holiday, and his office was
closed, so he would much have liked to keep me there for
the day ; but I had become imbued with a sense of the ne-
cessity of pressing on to my own work — though there really
was no urgent necessity — and would not be persuaded to
stop. Anglo-Indians in out-of-the-way places know that
they do you a service in sending you on quickly, and feel
that their desire to keep you is really more for their own
benefit than yours ; so, with a spirit of true hospitality, the
advent of breakfast was accelerated, his palki was ordered,

62 Life in the Mofussil.

and by ten o'clock I was once more en route, and furnished
with provisions for the da)'.

The speed and endurance of these Behar " palki
bearers " is extraordinary. By 4.30 p.m. I was at the
entrance of the Patna bazaar, some nine miles in length,
and thirty-three miles from Barh ; thus they had brought
me at an average rate of over four miles an hour, including
a stoppage of over half an hour for their midday meal.
It is true, I was a light weight ; but I once with a friend
tried to carry an empty palki, and found it so galling to
the shoulder that I could not get beyond a few yards,
while these men, who lived on little else than rice, could
carry a loaded one over forty miles, at the rate mentioned
above. There were sixteen of them, and four at a time
carried the palki, the remaining twelve resting themselves,
if so it may be called, by running along side it.

Extraordinary as this may appear, people get so accus-
tomed to the fact, that they look upon the palki in the
same light as any other conveyance, and show little con-
sideration for their human beasts of burden. Indeed, I
have known young officers put a stone or two of ammu-
nition in addition to the other necessary articles they had
with them into the conveyance, on the chance of sport
by the way side. The skin on the shoulders of these men
becomes thick and hard like that of a rhinoceros.

The last portion of my journey through the bazaar was
anything but pleasant ; the dust was choking, and the
stench of oil and rancid ghee was overpowering. It being
the cold weather too, a great number of wood fires were
lighted, the wood being by preference damp, and emitting

Palki Bearers. 63

a most pungent smoke, hostile indeed to mosquitoes, but
very trying to the eyes and sense of smell. The latter, I
imagine, natives do not possess, or only in some very
modified form.

At length, after nine miles of native huts, smells, and
noises, without seeing one single European, I reached,
about 6.30, the old " Foujdari Cutcherry" (Criminal Court
House), in a portion of which my next host had taken
up his residence. He was a civilian, Rawlinson by name,
like my friend of Bhaugulpore, who had passed his exami-
nations some three months previously, and had been for
that period in the exercise of his official duties.

On arrival I found him absent, " at the Commissioner
Sahib's," his bearer told me ; and so I had time for a bath,
always available in an Anglo-Indian establishment, and by
the time of his return was clean and clothed and in the
right mind for dinner.

The principal feature in the entertainment seemed to be
the multitude of bats of all sizes, which were attracted by
the lights in our room, from all parts of the huge old
building, and gyrated in orbits of varying dimensions
round the table above our heads. One small fellow finally
deposited himself in my host's soup, whereat I was some-
what disgusted ; but he, being a bit of a naturalist, was
much interested, bade me observe that the creature had
only fainted, requested me to watch the details of its
recovery, which duly took place in a few minutes, and he
then released it to resume its gyrations as before.

After dinner, over a cigar, I was initiated into some of
the details of Patna life and society. This place is the

64 Life in tJic Mofussil.

metropolis of the province of Behar, and, with the neigh-
bouring military station of Dinapore, separated only by
some six miles of good road, contains a larger European
population than any other Mofussil station in Bengal
proper. *

The province of Behar is divided into six districts or
counties, containing an aggregate area of 23,732 square
miles, and a population, according to the census of 1872, of
13,123,529. All this is presided over by the Commissioner
of Patna, in which place he has his head-quarters, though
he is expected to devote a certain portion of each year to
the personal inspection of the districts and various offices
under his charge. As may be supposed, he is a great man ;
for though he is not a law-giver, he is the administrator of
this vast area ; and the only official intervening between
him and the Governor-General of India, is the Lieutenant-
Governor of Bengal. He has also, it is true, to obey the
orders of the Revenue Board in revenue matters ; but he
is not altogether bound by red tape, and is entrusted with
a general supervision and control which is conveniently
indefinite, and gives him great power. For the perform-
ance of his arduous duties, he draws a salary of 3,000
rupees, equal to £300 monthly, plus a consolidated travel-
ling allowance of 250 rupees, or ,£25 a month for touring
expenses.

The present Commissioner, I was informed, was a
gentleman of mature age and experience, with, among
other qualifications, two marriageable daughters, a matter
of some importance in the Mofussil.

The next dignitary in point of rank and emoluments was

Social Elements. 65

the Opium Agent. This functionary exercised control
over this great Government monopoly in the provinces of
Behar and Bhaugulpore. The interests in his charge were
large ; but the duties, as far as I could learn, seemed to
involve merely probity, and not much work. The appoint-
ment appeared to me to be kept for such as desired, and
possibly deserved, otium cum dignitatc. The present man
lived a quiet, retired life, and I do not think had much
influence on the social life of Patna.

Next in order came the Civil and Sessions Judge, the
Collector-Magistrate, the Joint Magistrate, and the
Assistant Magistrate (my host), all covenanted civilians.
There were also the Doctor, or Civil Surgeon, who had, of
course, served some time with a regiment ; the Executive
Engineer, the local official of the P.W.D. (Public Works
Department, irreverently interpreted the Public Waste
Department by those who are not members of that branch
of the service) ; two Deputy Collectors, members of the
uncovenanted service ; three or four subordinate officers
of the Opium Department, and several railway officials.
To these must be added the Staff officers at Dinapore,
with those of the regiments quartered there ; and it will
be seen that Patna contained, with these and their female
dependants, large and varied European social elements.
I have not mentioned the native officers, as I did not
make their acquaintance on this occasion, and they count
for nothing socially.

My host was more of a naturalist than a sportsman, and
only kept one quadruped for necessary locomotion ; so the
next morning we started after our "chota hazri " to walk
VOL. I. F

66 Life in the Mofussil.

to the European portion of the station, called Bankipore,
situated about half a mile distant. The narrow road of
the native portion of the town here widens out into a
spacious plain of a circular shape, which formed the race-
course. There is scarcely a station in Bengal without this
means of providing for our favourite national amusement.
Around this are situated the residences of the Europeans,
the Church, and some of the Law Courts ; and the open
green space, with its fine trees, is very refreshing to the
eye after the long, dusty, narrow bazaar.

On making our way to the race-course, we found a
remarkably stout gentleman pounding round it on a very
strong-built Australian horse. He pulled up on seeing us,
and saluted my companion, who introduced me to him as
the judge. It seemed to me somewhat curious that this
very heavy individual should be the only member of the
Patna society who cared for equestrian exercise ; but I
found that in his youth he had been of slender dimensions
and a rider of steeple-chases ; and as we conversed, it
transpired that he had passed a good many years in the
district of Tirhoot, to which I was appointed, and he gave
me glowing accounts of the fine riding country and the
sport and sportsmen I should find there. Our meeting
ended with an invitation to dinner that evening, and we
went on to pay our respects to the Commissioner, Mr.
Coldham.

Him we found hard at work, with bundles of papers tied
with red tape before him, in his "dufter khana," or
library, the name given by natives to the room kept in
the house of every official for writing purposes, and where,

The Commissioner. 67

thanks to the absence of housemaids, the most comfortable
untidiness exists.

I was prepared to treat the great man with reserved
respect, for he would be practically my supreme ruler for
some time to come, and much depended on his opinion
and consequent reports of me. He, however, greeted me
right cordially, asked a good many questions about my
journey, and appeared amused at the route I had taken,
as I might have come by the regular " dak garree " (car-
riage service) from Raneegunge through Gya. All the
time he was talking he was taking up bundle after
bundle, and after making short notes on some, throwing
them into a large basket placed on the ground, while others
he reserved for more elaborate orders. This I wondered
at at the time, for some of the bundles so unceremoni
ously treated were at least a foot thick ; but I after-
wards got into the secret of this method of working, and
found that a very big bundle can often be temporarily
disposed of by a routine order.

Presently, on a summons, a chuprassie (" badge-wearer,"
official servant paid by Government) appeared, and carried
off the basket, overflowing with the bundles, which would
be emptied at the Commissioner's Cutcherry by his head
assistant, and the contents distributed to the various clerks,
who would elaborate short orders into formal letters,
which, when faired, would be returned to Mr. Coldham for
signature, and then forwarded to the various officials for
whom they were intended.

We now took our leave, Mr. Coldham telling us that his
wife and daughters would be delighted to see us to after-

68 Life in the Mofussil.

noon tea and croquet ; and on our way home Rawlinson
informed me that I might look forward to a very pleasant
afternoon. It was now time to think of bath and break-
fast ; and we were returning for the purpose, when a dog-
cart caught us up on the main road, the occupant of which
proved to be Alison, the Magistrate and Collector. He
asked us to come and breakfast with him as soon as we
were dressed ; and so my first day at Patna was pretty
well filled up with hospitality.

Alison's bungalow was small but comfortable, and
situated on the edge of what, in the rainy season, was the
mighty rushing stream of the Ganges ; but at this time
was a vast expanse of undulating sand, with here and
there channels of water half dried up, an alluvial formation
called in this part of the world a " deara," and in Lower
and Eastern Bengal a " chur." It was this Deara, and
the at present comparatively attenuated river, which
separated Patna from my own district, the palm-trees of
which I could see waving on the opposite bank, some six
or seven miles distant.

I found Alison a most pleasant host, full of interest in
his work, and at the same time with a keen capacity for
enjoyment. Afterwards he and I became excellent friends ;
but on the present occasion the conversation was prin-
cipally on the subject of some decision of Rawlinson's
which Alison had reversed. Rawlinson being his assistant
with what was then called " no powers," all appeals from
his decisions lay to him. It seemed that Rawlinson had
convicted one Nazir Baksh of assaulting one Peer Baksh,
and had fined him five rupees, or ten shillings, whereas

The Collector. 69

Alison was of opinion that no assault had taken place.
Rawlinson was rather hot on the subject, and his very-
keen interest in the matter seemed overstrained.

After breakfast my two companions went off to their
respective offices, and I was left to my own resources for a
time. Not for long, however, for it was scarcely two hours
before Rawlinson returned, and we sat talking over various
matters until it was time to go the Commissioner's.

" What have you been doing to-day ?" I asked.

" Oh ! those everlasting assault cases. They come in
shoals, and it would seem as if they were brought simply
to give the cJwta sahib (little gentleman) something to do.
It's weary, weary work ; and I long to pass my examina-
tion in March, and get powers to try something of more
importance. They are nearly all false. In some of them
there is perhaps a substratum of truth ; but in many
there is none whatever. If a man or woman have a
spite against another, their favourite method of gratifying
it is by bringing a case in court against them. If of a
sufficiently high class to make their own appearance in
court disagreeable, they make their servants complain
against their enemies themselves, or their servants.

" Here is an instance that occurred only ten days ago.
A case was referred to me for trial in which the complaint
was to the effect that a respectable mookhtyar (criminal
court attorney), by name Nubbee Baksh, had been severely
assaulted by two men, Pultoo Singh and Jeebun Mali, at
the instigation of a man called Bahadur Ali, that he was
lying at death's door, and could not come to Court to give
evidence. Alison probably suspected gross exaggeration

yo Life in the MofussiL

in the case, or he would not have made it over to mc.
However, at the request of the mookhtyar in charge of
the case, I went purposely down to the bazaar to record
his deposition. He was bandaged round the head, and
there was a good deal of blood on it, and he seemed in
great pain. The rest of his body was covered with a
blanket ; and being a young hand, I felt shy about
examining him too particularly.

" His story was to the effect that he was coming home
from Court the previous day with some valuable docu-
ments, and a sum of about twenty-five rupees in his girdle,
when Pultoo Singh and Jeebun Mali set upon him with
" latties " (bamboo clubs), knocked him down, kicked him,
and carried off his turban, his waist-cloth, his money, and
his documents. He recognised his assailants as two bad
characters who lived in the bazaar. After recording this,
I considered it advisable to report the matter to Alison,
who merely remarked, ' Has he been examined by the civil
surgeon ?' ' No,' I said ; ' I had not thought of that.'

" ' You should very seldom,' he said, ' believe a com-
plainant is really badly hurt until you have medical testi-
mony to that effect.'

" The civil surgeon accordingly, at my request, went
down without warning to the complainant's house ; but
delays were made about his seeing him when he got there,
and before he could get into his room he had bolted.
After this, I made the best inquiries I could into the
matter, and I ascertained what I believe now to be the
truth, viz., that Bahadur AH, the alleged instigator of the
assault, is the brother of Hyder Ali, the employer of

An Assault Case. y I

Nubbee Baksh ; that the two brothers are quarrelling about
a piece of garden land situated between their two houses,
and a few days ago their respective gardeners had a quar-
rel about some flowers they each wished to gather. Hyder
Ali, at the advice of Nubbee Baksh, then got up this case,
intending to make out that the documents in question
were the title-deeds of the land, and thus hoping not only
to spite Bahadur Ali by getting his servants Pultoo and
Jeebun punished, but also to lay the foundation of a suit
in the Civil Court.

"Alison has ordered Nubbee Baksh to be prosecuted for
perjury ; but he seems to think that the two brothers will
come to terms, and that it will be very difficult to get evi-
dence sufficient for a committal."

"Alison's experience helped you out of that pretty
well," I said ; " and yet you seemed very much annoyed
at his reversing the decision in the case we were talking
about at breakfast."

" Yes ; but that was a different kind of case altogether.
He may be right ; but it is not even supposed that there
was any cause for the complaint except the actual assault,
and it was merely a question of the quality of the evi-
dence. Now I had seen the witnesses, and observed their
demeanour, and I felt confident that in this case they
were describing what they had actually seen. Alison had
only seen the record ; and in such a case, unless there is
something really tangible to go on, I think he should
hesitate to disregard the opinions of the officer originally
trying the case.

"It is of course right that there should be appeals on

; 2 Life in the Mo/ussil.

both facts and law from the decisions of us juveniles; but
I have little doubt that in India the system is carried
much too far, both in civil and criminal matters. You
will understand this better when you have seen more of
the work. I only hope that at Mozufferpore you will get
a greater variety than I do here ; but in a big town like
this these petty cases are legion, and as all the other offi-
cials are useful in other ways, as having higher powers,
it is very natural they should all be made over to me.

" But it is time to go to the Commissioner's. There is
the station bath in his grounds, and being an Eton man —
you must swim. We will send our clothes, and dress there
after croquet, and go straight to the Judge Sahib's, which
is close by."

At the Commissioner's we found several people assem-
bled, with, " mirabile dictu" an almost equal number of both
sexes. We were soon set to work at croquet under the
directions of the Commissioner's daughters, two bright-eyed
young ladies, whose rosy complexions showed they were not
long from England ; and Mrs. Coldham was dispensing tea
at a table set out on the lawn, — if the term lawn may be
applied to the miserable grass that grows in Indian " com-
pounds " in the plains, — when suddenly an ayah appeared
on the verandah of the bungalow, which covered a good
large area, there being no upper story, and screamed out
something which I did not catch, but which caused every-
body to rush to the house, myself with the rest

We. reached a room which turned out to be Mrs.
Coldham's bedroom, and on looking in I saw, comfortably
lying on the bed, a cow, who had settled herself there, quite

Aii Obtrusive Cow. 73

regardless of the ayah's distress, and appeared to enjoy
the elasticity of her resting-place — a new spring couch just
imported from England. The room extended the whole
breadth of the house, and at the other side opened on
another grass plat, where Coldham's cows were kept. The
animal had got in from there, and was speedily though
cautiously ejected. Hindoo cattle, though so meek-look-
ing with their large, gentle eyes, are exceedingly imperti-
nent and obtrusive. They are left to cater mostly for
themselves, and their powers of making their way into
the most carefully-guarded enclosures is almost unlimited.
This animal was no exception to the general rule.

There was a good deal of laughter over the incident,
and then Coldham walked me up and down and gave me
some good advice in a very kind manner.

" From one or two things you let fall this morning,"
he said, " I am afraid you will be liable to a feeling of
disillusion and disappointment when you first commence
work. Your duties at the outset will not be of very great
public importance ; and, as you yourself will understand, it
is quite right they should not be so. But they will give
you plenty of opportunities of learning the language and
gaining experience ; and if you use these properly, by the
time you have passed both your examinations you will be
a really valuable Government servant. And you should
make up your mind to pass your examinations as speedily
as possible. It is dry work, grinding up Acts and Codes,
but it must be done ; and it is far less weary work
to use energy and pass your exams, on the first possible
occasion, than to fail and have to go over old ground,

74 Life in the Mofussil.

and be kept to the same petty work for another six months.
You should recollect also, that after passing your first
exam, you get an extra 50 rs. a month pay, and after the
second a further 50 rs., making your salary 500 rs. ; and if
reported fit in other respects you are invested with ' full
powers.' You must read your codes to find out what ' full
powers ' mean. We shall hope to see you over here in
March, when your first chance will arrive, though I shall
not expect you to pass then ; but you will have to be
examined, that we may see whether you have learned any-
thing or nothincr"

It was now time to go to the bath, and Rawlinson, reluc-
tantly leaving the society of the Misses Coldham, strolled
there with me. This is an institution at most Indian sta-
tions; and it is a great luxury to be able to take a plunge
and refresh oneself with a swim before making a toilet
for dinner. This was a good-sized masonry bath, with a
platform for dressing at one end, the whole covered with
thatch and protected by mat walls. It was filled from a
well in the garden, from which the water was drawn by
a small Persian wheel, worked by a couple of bullocks.

A melancholy incident had occurred here the previous
hot weather. A young guest of Coldham's had come in
after dark, undressed himself with eager haste to plunge
into the cool water, and jumped into the bath head fore-
most, which, through the negligence of the gardener who
attended to it, had been left empty. Death was apparently
instantaneous. It cast quite a gloom over the place at the
time; and since then the bath has never been empty after
J dark.

Good Advice. 75

On this evening the water was too cold to allow of any-
dawdling; and Rawlinson and myself soon found ourselves
at the Judge's, with quite a keen appetite for dinner. We
met Alison at the door with a roll of music under his
arm, and in the drawing-room, very much to R.'s delight,
found the two Miss Coldhams. There were also present
a young officer from Dinapore, and a Deputy Magistrate
with his wife and daughter, Mr., Mrs., and Miss Pease.

Mrs. Lawson evidently took pride in the management
of her house; and the arrangements, I should say, were
superior to those in most Mofussil establishments. The
details of the dinner were very similar to those in Calcutta,
even down to the ornamental batavee nimbo ; and this
comparison implies high praise. There was of course no
ice; but at this season it was cold enough to prevent its
absence being seriously felt.

It fell to my lot to sit next Miss Pease, a young lady
who had never been out of India, I found, and whose
subjects of conversation were therefore somewhat limited.
Her father had come out as second officer in a merchant
vessel, some twenty-five years previously ; and, finding a
friend at court, had obtained an appointment in the uncove-
nanted service. He had not been able to send his daughter
home, and she had been educated at a convent near Cal-
cutta ; and her experience of the world was confined to
the country between that place and Patna, her father having
been stationed at Bhaugulpore and Monghyr in previous
years. He had been in his present appointment for some
years, and his daughter's social horizon seemed to be
bounded by the neighbouring town of Dinapoor.

76 Life in the Mofussil.

I was entirely out of this of course, and it was fortunate
that the young officer was her neighbour on the other side.
They soon plunged into such personal gossip that I almost
fancied myself once more on board ship. I was a little
startled to hear him regretting the "good old times/' when,
if a servant within the limits of cantonments misbehaved
himself, his master or mistress merely sent him with a note
to the cantonment magistrate, requesting that the bearer
might receive twenty lashes ; which request was granted as
a matter of course. " Now," he said, " you can't get a man
punished without a regular case, just as if he were an Euro-
pean."

Miss Pease, whether from courtesy or conviction, ap-
peared quite to agree with her interlocutor.

"But," I interposed, "you surely would not have a
man flogged simply on the cx-parte statement of his em-
ployer."

" Oh ! " he replied, " you civilians always stand up for
these niggers. Of course they obey you because they
know your power ; but now they are perfectly well aware
that they can get the law of us, and they treat us just as
they like. You ask anybody who is not in your ser-
vice."

" My dear Williams," said Lawson, who had overheard
this, " you treat your servants well, and they will do the
same by you. You young fellows come out from England
and kick these poor submissive creatures about as if they
had no feeling, either mental or physical. You would not
dare to do it at home ; and yet you expect these people to
do all sorts of things for you that you would not venture

A Dinner Party. 77

to ask an English servant to do. ' It's a way you have in
the army,' and I think it fully accounts for the very low
character borne by regimental servants."

" You're a Judge Sahib," said Williams, " and all the
natives kowtow to you." And it seemed impossible to
get beyond this point with him.

After dinner we had some very good music. Mrs. Law-
son had married late, and therefore had time to obtain more
of the advantages of " Western civilization " than young
girls who come out to their parents at seventeen. Alison,
too, sang really well. Rawlinson seemed happy with the
Miss Coldhams. Alison at length gave us a lift home
behind his fast-trotting mare.

"Hard lines," I said, "for poor Miss Pease, never to have
been home to England."

" She does not miss pleasure she has never experienced,"
said Alison ; " and moreover she is going to be married to
a member of our service, who is at present in charge of the
subdivision of Sasseram. He is all alone there without a
white face near him, and her father was sent down to do
some settlement work. He took his wife and daughter
with him, and I suppose they both appeared as angels to
poor Smith in his solitude. They are to be married next
month. She doubtless has much the best of the bargain ;
and I dare say when he gets into civilized society again he
will regret it, and I have almost ventured to hint as much
to him, but without effect. I have seen one or two cases
of the sort. You and Rawlinson will have to undergo a
similar course; and before you plunge I should recommend
you to think of your people at home. I have myself felt

;S Life in the Mofussil.

the influence of loneliness. Merc we are. I won't come
in. Good-night/*

In Calcutta I had made the acquaintance of the Joint
Magistrate of Tirhoot, Darville, who had promised to help
me over part of the thirty-five miles of road between
llajcepore, on the opposite bank of the Ganges, and
Mozufferpore. I had informed him of my arrival at
Patna, and I now found a note asking me to be at Gooriah
Ghat, half-way on the road, by the following evening.

Rawlinson told me I need not start till midday, and he
would get me a palki and bearers.

CHAPTER IV.

LIFE AS ASSISTANT MAGISTRATE AND COLLECTOR AT
MOZUFFERPORE.

JOURNEY ACROSS THE GANGES. — DAK BUNGALOW. — DRIVE TO MO-
ZUFFERPORE.— FIND MY QUARTERS LONELY. — FIRST VISIT TO
CUTCHERRY, AND INVESTMENT IN OFFICE. — FIRST CASE. — CHU-
PRASSIES— INTRODUCTION TO MY MAGISTRATE AND COLLECTOR.
— SWORN IN AS ASSISTANT COLLECTOR.

By noon the palki and sixteen bearers were ready for
me, and Rawlinson himself prepared to accompany me as
far as the ghat, or place of embarcation for crossing the
Ganges. Here we said good-bye, and I was once more
left alone with my "native beasts of burden." The hos-
pitality of Patna had been extreme ; but I was glad to be
on my way again to the scene of my own labours ; and the
ferrymen and bearers, knowing that I was a " hakim "
(governor), though only in embryo so far, were very
deferential. There were a few other passengers in the
boat, two or three women among them, who had been
chattering away till we appeared, but who on seeing us
drew their " chaddars " (female linen garment of great
length, wound round the head and body) round their faces
and retired to the further end of the boat. The male
travellers also got as far away as they could.

It is not satisfactory to experience the constraint which

8o Life in the Mo/ussil.

a white face produces wherever it appears in an assem-
blage oi~ natives.

The progress of a Ganges ferry-boat is of the slowest.
Indeed they are the clumsiest things conceivable, and I
have often wondered why improved boats have not been
invented ; but the Ganges is a troublesome river to deal
with, and vessels suitable for one season do not do for
another. At this time of the year the river had divided
itself into three channels, and we had to disembark three
times, the distance to be traversed on sand in one case
being over three miles. My horses would have to cross
some fifty or sixty miles lower down, and it was a mystery
to me how the animals could get into such boats, the sides
of which bulge out into semicircles, and the thwarts of
which are so close together that a very small space is left
to jump between.

At length, after three hours' rowing, bumping, punting,
and walking, we reached the Hajeepoor Ghat on the oppo-
site bank ; and when the jabbering inseparable from a fresh
start had been got through, I found myself once more
swinging along to the monotonous chant of the bearers at
a little over four miles an hour.

It grew dark soon after we started ; but I had sufficient
time to observe that instead of the dry, cracked, mud plains
of the Patna district, capable of growing the heavy rice
only, and which in the dry cold season are perfectly bare,
we were passing through crops of oats, linseed, and pulse,
with frequent plantations of the castor-oil plant, which
attains a very considerable height.

I was very glad about 9 p.m. to reach the Gooriah Ghat

A Ganges Ferry -Boat. 81

dak bungalow. Dak bungalows are buildings erected by
Government at certain places along the road for the
convenience of European travellers, and are absolutely-
necessary in the absence of inns and innkeepers, of whose
extortions we are so apt to complain in the West. They
are generally placed under the charge of a khansamar
who receives a small salary, and is supposed to make his
profit as a " licensed victualler." Government charges one
rupee, or two shillings, for the use of the bungalow by
each traveller.

That at Gooriah Ghat consisted of three small rooms,
covered by a thatched roof, and with a short verandah on
two sides. Outside I observed the dog-cart of Darville,
the Joint Magistrate, who had come to meet me, and inside
I found its owner reading by the light of a candle stuck in
a bottle. The number of visitors was not large, and the
resources of the place were small.

The khansamar was able to provide me with a skinny
fowl, which, by the way, took refuge under my chair before
being killed for my meal (Darville had expected me
earlier, and dined previously), and some "chupatties"
made of "sujee" (flour ground coarse, and water) ; and off
this and some potted meat, which Darville had brought
with him, I feasted with a fair appetite. He had been mind-
ful of tea, sugar, and a candle, but had forgotten bread.

He was glad to have some one to talk to, and to
hear the Calcutta and Patna news ; but the one candle did
not admit of a late sitting, and so we turned in by half-
past ten.

The bed-furniture struck me as scanty. There was a
VOL. I. G

82 Life in the Mofussil.

mattress and a pillow, and mosquito curtains, but nothing
in the shape of sheets, blankets, or pillow cases ; and I was
glad that I had brought a couple of railway rugs with
me. Sleep, however, came very willingly to this not very
luxurious couch ; and I was quite surprised when Darville
woke me up at the screech of dawn, saying he wished to
make as early a start as possible.

Tea was soon ready, and after paying my bill, amount-
ing to three shillings, including the Government charge,
we walked to the ghat of the little river, which is here
only some twenty yards wide, and across which the dog-
cart, with the horse harnessed to it, was ferried in a sort of
raft boat.

The road was of a light sandy soil, overgrown with short
grass, which keeps the surface well bound together, and
sufficiently hard for the traffic to which it is subjected.
We had only seventeen miles to go, but to do this we
made use of three horses ; and I found it was the Tirhoot
custom not to drive a horse a dak, or stage, of more
than five miles. In comparison with the rest of Bengal, it
is a great district for roads, but they are none of them
metalled, and get heavy in the very dry season and the
height of the rains. Horses, too, can be kept cheaply, and
as the planters dotted about the country all keep a large
number, and help each other when required, a " dak," as
the expression is, of twenty horses can be laid for one
hundred miles without much difficulty. Darville had two
of his own horses out, and one belonging to a planter,
Colville by name, whose factory was quite close to M ozuf-
ferpore.

Tirhoot Roads. S3

The country as we drove along was quite flat and un-
interesting, though there is no doubt that Tirhoot consists
of a series of undulations, but they scarcely strike the eye,
as the elevations in most cases are probably not over three
or four feet. Such a rise, however, makes all the difference
in the nature of the crops that the soil can grow, as water
lodges in the depressions, and makes them fit for rice
only.

Our conversation turned naturally on the station society,
and I found it consisted of the following elements : the
Judge, who was just about to retire, and a new man was
expected in his place ; the Additional Judge, Bertram, with
whom I was going to chum ; the Collector, Blake, with his
wife and some young children ; the Doctor, Macpherson,
with a very charming wife, and no children ; the Clergyman
and his wife ; the planter, above mentioned, with his wife
and family ; A Deputy Magistrate and a Deputy Opium
Agent, with large families ; and the planter's doctor.

Many planters were frequently coming in on business,
and had leased a bungalow in the station, which they had
formed into a club.

Last, but by no means least, was the manager of the
estate of the young Rajah of Durbhungah, which had been
taken under the care of Government, and who was sup-
posed to reside at Durbhungah, which may be called the
capital of the property, but who passed the greater portion
of his time in a palatial mansion at Mozufferpore, called
Secundrapore, and was of great importance in assisting the
station festivities.

About 9 a.m. we entered the town of Mozufferpore, the

84 Life in the Mofussil.

breadth of the road at this its southern side, and an avenue
of tall trees, rendering the appearance of the bazaar huts
specially insignificant ; and after about a mile of this de-
bouched on to the plain which exists in nearly all Bengal
stations, at the further side of which appeared three houses
—one Darville's, one the Doctor's, the third being empty.
On our left was the dak bungalow ; on our right, the racket
court, the Judge's new Cutcherry (Court House), the Fouj-
dari Cutcherry, in which Darville dispensed criminal justice
(and where I should at first be principally occupied), and
further on the main bazaar of the town.

Darville rather apologized for the appearance of his
house ; and externally it did look a little tumble-down ; but
inside the rooms were large and comfortable enough, and
at the back was an expanse of water called the " lake,"
which had formerly been the main bed of the Gunduk ; but
the river, with the usual caprice of Bengal streams, had
turned off to the north, after passing round a piece of
rather high land which formerly formed the race-course,
and on which the above-mentioned mansion of Secundra-
pore was situated, also the Circuit House, or Government
building for the use of the Commissioner of Patna and
other peripatetic dignitaries when they happened to visit
this station.

At one end of the lake was Colville's factory, and at the
other a sort of embanked bridge, over which lay the road
to the high land above mentioned, and which formed the
fashionable evening drive of the European community.
The lake water percolated through this embankment, and
found its way into the old bed of the stream along the

Mozufferpore. 85

back of the main bazaar, joining the new current just
above the Collector's house, which was situated at the
other end of the town. The old channel was in the dry-
season a series of shallow pools and a great producer of
mosquitoes.

This much I learned while enjoying a cigar in the veran-
dah with Darville after bath and breakfast. The sun was
bright and the sky blue, there was a gentle cool westerly
breeze, just sufficient to wrinkle in patches the surface of
the lake without raising dust on land, and, looking north-
wards, a faint glimpse of the snowy Himalayas was obtain-
able. The general effect, as we sat with our legs supported
by the long arms of our cane chairs, and the smoke of our
cigars curled lazily upwards, was deliciously soothing.

Three months afterwards how different was the scene ! y
Every window closed, to keep out the dense clouds of dust
whirled along by the howling, tearing west wind, every-
thing reduced to a state of tinder by the extreme dryness,
the backs of all the books curled up, the ink too thick to
flow from the pen, one's hair like tow, and a general sense
of grittiness and hot discomfort that must be felt to be
understood.

Our tranquillity was interrupted by the sound of wheels,
and in a moment the chuprassie informed us that " His
Highness the Judge Sahib Bahadur and his Highness the
Additional Judge Sahib Bahadur, having put the blessed
honour in a dog-cart, had brought it to the door," by which
he merely intended to express the fact that the Judge and
the Additional Judge (my friend Bertram) had called in a
doer-cart.

86 Life in the Mofussil.

I was very glad to sec Bertram, with whom I was to
chum ; but my pleasure was much damped by the an-
nouncement that he had to start that very evening for the
neighbouring district of Purneah, to which he had been
appointed. This initiated me into the very migratory
nature of Anglo-Indian society. He carried off my modest
amount of traps in the dog-cart, saying he would send me
a horse to ride down in the evening. The animal, a beau-
tiful bay Arab, turned up about 4.30, and I found my way
across the embankment, past Secundrapore, down a newly-
made road that ran between the new and old beds of the
Gunduk river, to his house.

We dined early, as he had a long palki journey before
him, and at 7 he started, with the usual noise and jabber,
and a flaring torch emitting a most disgusting stench,
which I observed at the time the torch-bearer carried to
windward of the palki, and which I have found that torch-
bearers invariably do so carry, notwithstanding all possible
persuasion to the contrary. Palanquins are happily not
such necessities in many parts of India as they used to be ;
but even at this lapse of time the most lasting impression
left upon me by that method of travelling is the smell of
those disgusting torches.

I turned back into the house and felt lonely. The
dining-room was about forty feet long, and the other rooms
in proportion. The furniture in England would have been
thought very scanty ; but for India it was decidedly above
the average, for Bertram was a man who liked to be com-
fortable. He hoped to return in a month or two ; and in the
meantime I was left in charge of his effects, and he was

Lonely Quarters. 87

, • /

to pay half the rent of the house, the whole being 1 20 rs.,

or £\2, monthly, which included the salaries of two gar- ,

deners. This was moderate enough, considering its size,

but would have made a considerable hole in my pay of

400 rs., or £40, a month, from which had to be deducted a

four per cent, income tax, and another eight per cent., or

so, for civil and widows' and orphans' funds, to support

my possible widow and orphans.

We young bachelor civilians used to grumble at this ;
but I am free to confess now that I am very glad that this
provision for such contingencies was made compulsory.
It is this that makes us all worth £300 a year, dead or
alive, and prevents the probability of starvation of invalid
sons or unmarried daughters.

I retired to the drawing-room to read till bedtime, and
began to wonder whether Darville felt lonely also, and
thought he must, for he was a married man and temporarily
separated from his wife and two children, whom he had
left at the station of his last appointment, having been sent
up to Tirhoot to learn Hindustani, in which he had not
yet passed his final examination. I also began to think
it would be less lonely if he would come and help me to
occupy this big house for a time ; but my meditations were
interrupted by a sound like that of a muffled gong, caused
by the rising of such a swarm of mosquitoes as I had not
before experienced.

I tied a handkerchief over my head, lighted my biggest
cigar, and put my hands in my pockets ; but it was all use-
less, and I was obliged to take refuge in bed under the
mosquito curtains. This was a great drawback to this

SS Life in the Jlfofussil.

house, which, as I have said above, was situated on the
bank of the old channel of the Gunduk, and rendered it
almost intolerable to be alone in it after sunset in the cold
weather. Mosquitoes, I have observed, are much less
troublesome in a room where there is plenty of light and
conversation. It may be that one's attention is diverted
from their noise, but at any rate they don't bite so much.

The next morning I had a canter on Bertram's horse,
and reconnoitred more of the town, which seemed very
small for so large a district, Tirhoot comprising an area of
6,343 square miles, and containing a population of 4,389,250,
according to the last census. About a quarter of a mile
from me was the residence of Blake, who governed all this,
and I looked at it with a certain amount of awe. He was
away in camp with his wife and family, and not expected
to return for a day or two. Opposite his house was the
church, of the dimensions of a good- sized room, and next
to it the parsonage, very small indeed.

My official labours were to commence to-day, so I
returned early to bath and breakfast, and made my way
about eleven to the Foujdari Cutcherry. Darville I found
had not arrived, though there was already a busy crowd
around the building. Nothing could be done by me till
he came, as he was to administer to me the customary
oath, and make over to me such cases as I might be
empowered to try.

I went over to his house, which was just opposite, and
found him looking rather worried, with three native clerks
seated on the ground, and a mass of papers in the ver-
nacular round them. He was reading, and two were

Police Reports. 89

writing. " I'm awfully late," he said, on seeing me ; " but
Monday is always a bad day, as there are a double lot of
reports. Sit down, and it may help you to learn some-
thing of what you will have to do some day."

I listened ; but, by a not very sensible arrangement, I
had taken up Hindustani first in Calcutta, devoting the
last five months of my stay there to Bengali, and con-
sequently I now knew very little Hindustani beyond
the amount necessary for giving orders to servants, and I
understood very little. I gathered, however, that they
were police reports.

The district was divided into so many police jurisdic-
tions, called " thannahs," each of which was presided over
by an officer called a " darogah," who had under him
"naib," or deputy, " darogahs," and " burkundazes," or con-
stables. From each of these thannahs came in daily
reports of everything that had happened, or so much of
it as the daroghah chose to tell ; and if any serious
crime occurred, special reports of such, and of the progress
and results of the investigation, were submitted. All these
the Joint Magistrate had to listen to, — for the new police, to
be treated of hereafter, had not been introduced, — and this
threw a very heavy amount of work on his shoulders.

One report might be to the effect that a part of the
thatch of the thannah building was out of repair, or that
the ferry-boat on the neighbouring river was leaky ; while
the next might report a serious gang robbery with vio-
lence, or even a raid of Nepaulese bad characters from
the other side of the frontier.

On all of these, orders had to be passed at once. They

90 Life in the Mofussil.

were given verbally, and written down by the two clerks
who were not employed in reading the reports ; and when
the whole were finished, the reports, with the orders written
on them, were placed before Darville for signature, and
formed a heap about two feet high. The clerks were dis-
missed, and Darville, after devoting ten minutes to a hasty
breakfast, was ready for Cutcherry.

The crowd had increased by the time of our arrival, and
the noise also, the whole interesting enough to an initiated
observer. There were various groups, of which the centre
figure was a respectably-dressed man, with a white turban
and tolerably white garments, surrounded by individuals
with scanty clothing and of unkempt appearance, who
listened intently to all that he said. These were the
mookhtyars, or Criminal Court attorneys, teaching the wit-
nesses what to say in their respective cases, and suggesting
answers to all possible questions, the whole thing having
been previously rehearsed at the mookhtyar's house. In
other places were seated the sellers of stamps, by
means of which the Government Court fees are collected ;
in another were some twenty prisoners waiting trial, all
squatting on their hams, and kept together by a string
passed round them, the whole under the charge of three
burkundazes, armed only with swords, which subsequent
experience taught me could not be drawn from their scab-
bards under a quarter of an hour at least.

Darville looked at these with a weary eye. " I shall be
in till dark to-day," he said ; " this New Criminal Pro-
cedure Code makes everything so long."

I scarcely understood the force of the remark at the

Criminal Proccdtire Code. 91

time ; but I knew that the New Penal Code and the
Criminal Procedure Code had come into force at the com-
mencement of the current year.

Before this, the custom had been to tell off a clerk to
record the evidence tendered in each case, and, when com-
pleted, to bring the parties before the presiding magistrate,
to whom the depositions were read over, and who then
could put questions to each witness by way of cross-ex-
amination. If there were more cases than usual, it was
only necessary to turn on two or three extra clerks, for
there were always plenty of " ummedwars," or " hopefuls,"
ready to work without pay for any length of time, in the
hope of getting an appointment finally ; and it might hap-
pen that the evidence of five or six cases would be recorded
simultaneously in different corners of the Court Room.
This, of course, tended to great economy of the time of the
presiding magistrate ; but the power it placed in the hands
of corruptible clerks is obvious, and needs no comment.

The Indian Penal Code Act XLV. of i860 consolidated
the criminal law of India ; and every conceivable offence
is punishable under one of its 511 sections. The Criminal
Procedure Code Act XXV. of 1861 was framed to suit this ;
and they came into force together. Under this Act, the
magistrate has to take the evidence down in English in his
own hand, and then read it over to the witness in his own
vernacular, and ask him if it is correct. And when the
witness has admitted it to be so, the magistrate has to add
a memorandum to the evidence, to the effect that this has
been done, and to sign the whole. No wonder poor Dar-
ville, who had been accustomed to the old easy method,

9- Life in the Mofussil.

considered the new process a long one. In very petty
cases, such as trifling assaults, it is only necessary for the
magistrate to make a memorandum of the substance of
what the witness says ; but this he must do with his own
hand, and sign it.

The Court building struck me with astonishment and dis-
gust. It resembled in construction the bungalow of my host
at Bhaugulpore, described in Chapter III., though it was
a little larger. It contained really only three rooms of mo-
derate size. In one of these Darville sat ; in one, a deputy
native magistrate ; and another was reserved for Blake, who
came here once a week to do magisterial business, the rest
of his time being engaged in Collectorate (revenue) work,
in another office, situated two miles off, at the other end of
the town. The rest of the building was broken up by mats
and an occasional masonry wall, into a record room, clerk's
office, small retiring room for the magistrate, and a hole for
unclaimed property. And this was the chief Criminal Court
of a district of over 6,000 square miles, containing more
than four millions of people. It is true that the plan of a
new Cutcherry, which would contain accommodation for all
the collectorate and magisterial officials, had been laid out,
but, up to date, this was all that Government had con-
sidered necessary for this purpose.

Such economy, arising from a laudable desire to avoid
increase of taxation, can scarcely be harshly criticized ; but
I was " riled " when, a few years after, I read an account of
the magnificent new India Office in London, and the ball
given to the Sultan of Turkey at the opening thereof, at a
cost to India of ,£ 10,000.

Cutcherry. 93

The interior of the Court-house more than equalled the
exterior in squalor. In the centre of the room where Dar-
ville sat was a raised platform of masonry, some three feet
high, on which was placed a long writing-desk, dented and
inked all over, with a very old arm-chair for the presiding
official. At right angles to this, on a platform about six
inches lower, were placed seats for the clerks, and beyond
this again a railing was erected on which the mookhtyars
and pleaders could lean when addressing the Court, and
which served as a barrier between them and the desks.
At each end of this railing was a small space of two feet
square, railed in on the platform, for the witnesses and
defendants ; and in the space left outside these arrange-
ments the crowd of those interested in the cases and other
spectators jostled each other, and accommodated them-
selves as they best could. The room was perhaps twenty
feet square. The walls had been white, but were now of
various hues of black and dirty brown. Ink seemed to
have reached everywhere, even to the punkah, which in
this, the cold season, hung motionless and dirty over Dar-
ville's head. I shuddered to think of the consequence of
its being pulled in its present state ; but I afterwards ascer-
tained that a small sum for contingencies was allowed to
be entered in the magisterial budget, and that a portion
of this was applicable each year to the cleansing of pun-
kahs.

Darville now took his seat ; and I observed that notwith-
standing the squalor of his surroundings, the deference
with which he was treated was great. The whole assem-
blage salaamed in the most profound manner, and all the

94 Life in the MofussiL

clerks present rose and remained standing until he had
seated himself, and another chair, with a weak leg, had
been brought for me.

I may state here, that these remarks about the office
accommodation are applicable to at least two-thirds of the
districts in Bengal, even to the gaols, which in many cases
were not intended in the first instance for the purpose to
which they are now applied.

Darville's first proceeding was to distribute the new
cases which were ready for trial that day. There were some
three or four trivial cases of assault and cattle trespass,
two of housebreaking and theft, and one of dacoity, in which
most of the prisoners I had seen outside in the string were
implicated. The petty cases were made over to the native
magistrate sitting in the same building, and the theft cases
to another Deputy Magistrate, who was obliged to sit in
the Collectorate Court, situated at some two miles dis-
tance, as mentioned above, and whither the mookhtyars,
witnesses, and others concerned, had to make their way.
The dacoity (gang robbery) case Darville kept for himself,
as most important.

He then ordered petitions to be collected. This was a
process generally gone through at the end of office hours ;
but he had it done at once on this occasion in order
that some fresh case on which I might try my virgin
hand might be forthcoming. The petitioners were a little
taken by surprise, and there was a rush out to get com-
plaints written out, though many were ready; and in about
ten minutes some twenty flimsy bits of paper of various
sizes and colours were in the hands of the Sherishtadar, or

Sworn in as Magistrate. 95

head ministerial clerk, who proceeded to read their con-
tents.

Darville selected two, which he told me were complaints
of assault ; and one of the clerks, who was said to have a
slight knowledge of English, was ordered to accompany
me to the Court-room I was to sit in and help me through
the case. I was then sworn in as a magistrate, and at
length found myself sitting on my own bench, with power
to inflict a fine of 50 rs., or a sentence of one month's im-
prisonment, with or without hard labour, in all cases which
were triable in accordance with the Criminal Procedure
Code by a magistrate of my calibre.

It was rather an undignified proceeding. First, the
complainant in each case was put on oath ; and though
the form is simple enough, it is a matter requiring consider-
able patience to make a novice who has not been in court
before repeat the words properly. It is necessary to be
careful about this ; for though I. do not think the oath has
any effect on ninety-nine witnesses out of a hundred, the
possibility of a prosecution for perjury is always in the
mind of the presiding officer, and somebody must be in a
position to swear that the oath was properly administered.

In the old days Hindoos used to be sworn over some
Ganges water, or holding a cow's tail, or with the hand on
the head of their eldest son ; but all these forms have been
abolished, and the form of oath is now, — " According to
my religion, in the presence of the Almighty, whatever I
shall say in this case shall be the truth, and nothing but
the truth." For Mohammedans the form is similar,
only the word " Imam " is used for religion instead of

96 Life in the Mofussil.

" dharm," and " Khuda " for the Almighty instead of " Per-
meshur." A late Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal introduced
a bill into the Governor-General's Council for the resusci-
tation of these old forms ; but it was not successful.

On the present occasion one of the complainants was a
woman rejoicing in the name of Lakshmee Telinee. She
was a small shopkeeper in a neighbouring village, who sold
oil and other things. It is not an unusual idea with com-
plainants in petty cases, that they can take the " Hakim "
by storm. Now, I had seen this old lady sitting quietly
outside with her mookhtyar ; but when her name was
called out by my chuprassie (of whom, by the way, four
had been allotted to me), she rushed in and threw herself
on the ground, exclaiming with great volubility, — "Justice,

0 lord of generosity ! Justice, O nourisher of the poor !

1 am very poor. I am dead altogether. I am a widow.
Ram Singh came to my house "

Clerk (quite unmoved). " Stand up, take the oath."
Complainant (standing up). " What ? "
Clerk. " Say, ' According to my religion.' "
Complainant. "Justice, O lord."
Clerk. " Listen. Say what I say."
Complainant. " Well ? "
Clerk. " According to my religion."
Complainant. " According to my religion."
Clerk. " In the presence of the Almighty/'
Complainant. "In the presence of the Almighty" (break-
ing away again). " Justice, O lord. Ram Singh came to

my shop "

Clerk. " Will you take the oath ? "

Taking the Oath. 97

Complainant. "Justice, O lord. I don't understand. I
am a widow. Ram Singh came to my shop "

Clerk (getting angry). " Go to, baseborn ; will you take
the oath ? "

Complainant. " Justice, O lord " (rather subdued).

Clerk. " According to my religion, in the presence of the
Almighty, whatever I shall say in this case shall be the
truth "

Complainant. " In accordance with," etc., " shall be the
truth," etc. (Breaks away again.) " Of course I shall tell
the truth. Have I come here to tell lies ? It's all true.
Justice, O my father and mother {inabap)\ Ram Singh came
to my shop "

Clerk (utters some abuse, so I to voce, against the com-
plainant's female relatives. Addresses the mookhtyar).
" Make her understand she must take the oath."

Mookhtyar (wishing to enlist sympathy of young and
inexperienced Hakim). " She is a poor woman."

Clerk. " Listen, you Lakshmee ; if you won't take the
oath, the Hakim cannot listen to you/'

At length, after two or three more attempts, the woman
was made to repeat the words of the oath properly ; and
with considerable delay and difficulty I elicited the gist of
her story, that Ram Singh, the accused, had come to her
shop and purchased some oil, and had not only refused
payment for the same when demanded, but had cuffed and
kicked her, taking away her " chaddar " (a garment) and
leaving her senseless. There were five witnesses of the
occurrence. It further appeared that all this had taken
place some ten days previously, which made mc think the
VOL. I. H

98 Life in the Mofussil.

violent emotion of the woman all the more surprising. I
issued a summons on the defendant and the complainant's
witnesses for that day week, and having gone through the
other complaint, closed my Court for the day.

It was capital practice for learning the language ; but I
was much shocked at my own deficiency. It occurred to
me to imagine what would be the feelings of the English
public, should a magistrate with a knowledge of the lan-
guage equal to mine proceed to try a case.

My four chuprassies contended for the honour of carry-
ing my empty Cutcherry box, and so escorted I walked
across to the Racket Court.

These chuprassies are attached to each official as per-
sonal servants ; and though paid by Government the mag-
nificent salary of 4 rs. monthly, can be dismissed at the
option of the officer to whom they are attached. Their
first duty is, of course, to carry official letters and mes-
sages ; but they also perform all sorts of domestic work,
and are particularly fond, in a married household, of look-
ing after children. Their pay is small ; but the post is
eagerly sought after, as I am afraid they get a good
many small pickings, at any rate in a district so remote
from head-quarters as Tirhoot, and they are most anxious
to please their masters. The moment a man becomes a
court official in India, in however subordinate a position,
his status is raised, and he himself proceeds to take advan-
tage of it.

What profit a native may expect to make by bribing
a chuprassie I do not know ; but it is his nature to do so,
and he has the idea, I suppose, that by being generally

CJmprassics. 99

pleasant to the great man's servants, he is more likely to
be agreeable to the great man. It seems impossible for
us to make them understand how abhorrent to us is this
system of currying favour. Their minds are differently
constituted, and they like it, and would rather gain their
point in this way than by straightforward conduct.

Government, however, does exercise a sort of moral
supervision over the treatment of these men, and this may
be shown by the following instance. Years later I was
Magistrate of Dacca, and had just returned from office to
complete some official correspondence in my private "dufter
khana." It was intensely hot, and I called out to the
chuprassie in waiting to find the punkah wallah. He said
there was none present, so I ordered him to pull the
punkah himself, if he could not find one. He came into
the room and said respectfully, but very positively, that he
had never pulled a punkah and never would, for if he did
his " izzat " (social status) would be lowered. I replied
that he must either obey my orders or leave the service.
To which he answered that he would leave the service ; so
I told him to go.

The natives of Dacca, I should add, were far more inde-
pendent in their manner to officials than those of Tirhoot ;
and I believe the native subordinate officials got far fewer
illegitimate gratifications. There was steamer and rail
communication with Calcutta, and this brought the district
into sufficiently close contact with the metropolis to allow
apparently the diffusion of the knowledge that the local
official was, in fact, not all-powerful, but subject to the real
and substantial control of the Supreme Government.

ioo Life in the Mofussil.

For some four or five days the chuprassie did not appear
to perform his duties, and I appointed another man in his
place, a little surprised at his quiet acquiescence ; but at
the expiration of this time, on my going to Cutcherry one
morning, he came to my buggy, salaamed, and wished to
take out my official box. I ordered him off, and thought
no more of the matter.

About a fortnight afterwards I received a demi-official
note from the Commissioner, inclosing an autograph letter
from the senior member of the Board of Revenue in Cal-
cutta, to the effect that this chuprassie had appeared
before him and stated that he had been dismissed for
refusing to pull my punkah. That he had censured the
man for his disobedience, as it was part of his duty, and
told him he could do nothing for him. However, he
thought that the Commissioner should intimate to me
that I should reinstate him after six months' suspension.
The Commissioner requested me to act on this suggestion,
and said he should personally inquire, after the expiration
of six months, whether I had done so.

It seemed that this man, knowing me to be on friendly
terms with the Commissioner, had thought it advisable to
go all the way to Calcutta to the senior member of the
Board of Revenue to make his appeal, spending at least
four months' salary in the journey. What he actually said
I do not know ; but he was a venerable-looking fellow
with a long white beard, and probably made out my con-
duct to have been much more arbitrary than it had been.
I waited till the end of the period, having in the meantime
taken the precaution to make all my chuprassies pull the

Play and Work. 101

punkah occasionally, which they did submissively enough
I then asked for news of this man, and of course received
a heartrending account of his wretched state ; so, pretend-
ing to have compassion on him, I had him reinstated, and
thus obtained, though perhaps undeservedly, a reputation
for kindliness of heart while preserving my own " izzat."

This anecdote seems to me worthy of record, as showing
the care that the highest Government officials would take
to prevent even seeming harshness or injustice to the
meanest of their subordinates.

The spirit of economy has been abroad ever since I
entered the service, and the number of these retainers has
been very much reduced, an Assistant Magistrate having
now only one instead of four, and a Magistrate Collector
only four instead of sixteen.

At the Racket Court I found two indigo-planters, who
turned out to be the sons of the Deputy Collector,
Arkwright, — and the Civil Surgeon, Macpherson. They
were in want of a fourth, and so my advent was welcome.
I found they were all beginners, and I had had a good
deal of practice, so I could do what I liked with them ; and
this was some satisfaction to me, as it tended to dispel the
preconceived idea that, as a Wallah, I must be a muff all
round.

Darville came over just in time for one game before dark ;
but his work followed him, for there was a regular stream
of clerks with bundles of papers, warrants, and summonses,
etc., for signature, while two or three batches of newly-ap-
prehended prisoners were brought up, for orders whether
they should be admitted to bail or detained in custody.

102 Life in the Mofussil.

Darville stood in flannel shirt and trousers with his arms
bare, panting from his recent exertions, and gave his orders
verbally, which were reduced to writing in the vernacular
and then signed by him. The scene was new to me ; but I
very soon got accustomed to this way of doing things. I
also observed with curiosity that a native writer does not
require a table for his purpose, indeed he rather prefers
its absence, and holding his paper upright in his left
hand writes sitting or standing with the most wonderful
celerity.

At length they were all disposed of, and the conversa-
tion turned on the forthcoming races, which were to take
place in about ten days' time. The merits of various
horses were equally discussed, and all my companions had
animals entered for the occasion. Darville was going to
ride his own, and the two Arkwrights, whom I found to
have considerable notoriety as race-riders, seemed to be
engaged in every event. I was a little out of all this, as
my racing knowledge was very limited, my personal ex-
perience being confined to Bullingdon. The Arkwrights
gave me a lift home to the door of my house, and there
left me to my loneliness and mosquitoes.

The next morning, very early, I was considering what
on earth I should do with myself till Cutcherry time, when
in came Macpherson. " I say, Gordon, will you ride my
horse Lunatic in the hack race."

" I am quite inexperienced in race-riding," I said ; " but
if you care to entrust such important interests to me, I
will do the best I can."

" All right, you're a light weight. It is a catch weight

A Motmt for the Hack Race. 103;

race for gentlemen riders ; and if you can manage to keep
his head straight I think he must win."

" I am much obliged," I began.

" I am the obliged party," he said. " I'll send the horse
down for you to ride this evening. He is rather trouble-
some at times ; but the syce will tell you all about him.
Good morning."

In the afternoon I told Darville of what I had under-
taken. " The horse is a brute," he said ; " but he has a
turn of speed."

On reaching home after office I found the " brute,"
being led about my compound by two syces ; both of
whom kept as near as they could to the end of the rope
attached to his bridle.

On preparing to mount him, the syce begged me to be
careful, as he said "Age piche se bahut lat marta" (He
kicks out very much, both before and behind).

And in truth, the moment I approached his head he
struck out at me with his fore feet in the most violent way.

" He bites too," said the syce. " Then how on earth am
I to mount him ? " I asked.

" He must be blinded," he said. And untwisting his
puggeree, or turban, he managed to throw it over the
animal's head, and so blindfold him.

" Be pleased to be quick," he said — a piece of advice
which I scarcely needed. However, he let me mount
quietly enough, and once on his back, I proceeded to try
a little patting and coaxing, what the natives call " phusa-
lana."

" That is no use," said the syce. " If your highness can

104 Life in thc Mofussil.

frighten him a little he will go better." And as I went
out of the gate he added, " He shies occasionally."

The fact was, he was a type of animal by no means
uncommon in India, which may be described as actually
ferocious, but generally endowed with courage and endu-
rance in proportion to their ferocity.

Turning Out of my gate I met one of the Arkwrights
on his way to the Racket Court. " Mind you don't
tumble off," he said, " or you will be eaten up."

" A great incentive to stick on," I replied ; but I did
not feel comfortable.

A little way from the gate the bazaar road narrowed
somewhat ; and the shopkeepers, with that utter disregard
of public convenience which characterizes all natives, had
appropriated a considerable portion of the thoroughfare
for the display of their wares. The European officials
have to wage constant war against this habit ; for native
magistrates are, of course, of the same way of thinking as
their fellow-countrymen, and the police would never dream
of interfering unless they wished to spite some individual.

I had just piloted Lunatic, who was showing signs of a
desire to indulge in one of his occasional shies, as far as
the shop of a potter, or rather potteress, who had arranged
nearly the whole of her fragile stock-in-trade on the road ;
water-pots, cooking vessels, of all shapes and sizes, were
there. Just then there was a sound of wheels behind, and a
dog-cart with a lady and gentleman and two children in it
passed me at a rapid rate. Lunatic gave a tremendous
bound to the left ; there was an awful crash and clatter
and a good deal of screaming. On collecting my scared

An Introduction. 105

senses, I found that Lunatic had fallen right among the
pots and pans ; but had recovered himself, and now was
standing, still fortunately, but quivering with fright. I had
been shot into the shop. The syces, who were following,
promptly got hold of the horse. The dog-cart had pulled
up, and the gentleman, coming towards me, trusted I was
not hurt. Strange to say, with the exception of some cuts
in one of my boots and two scratches on Lunatic's quarter,
we had suffered no injury at all.

" You are Mr. Gordon, I presume ? " said my interlo-
cutor. " My name is Blake ; I have just returned from
camp."

" I am sorry to make your acquaintance in such an
unceremonious fashion," I said ; " but these people ought
not to block up the road in this way."

" No," said Blake ; " and I am going to pitch into the old
woman at once." Whereupon he threatened her with the
direst penalties of the law ; and she protested, as natives
always do in these cases, that she was not only ruined but
dead.

Having scolded her well, Blake told her that out of
compassion I would give her ir. (2 shillings) ; explaining
to me that her whole stock was probably worth 5rs., and if
I paid her on the calculation that I had destroyed a
fifth part, I should be treating her very liberally. Appa-
rently she thought so too ; for on receipt of the coin her
face assumed quite a radiant expression ; and I believe she
would have been glad of a recurrence of the accident daily.

Here the syce interposed, and suggested I should mount
at once, before Lunatic had got over his present submis-

106 Life in the Mofussil.

sive state, or otherwise I might find it difficult. " Good
evening," said Blake, " Come to my house to-morrow about
eleven, and I will drive you down to the Collectorate and
swear you in as an Assistant Collector ; besides, I have a
little work for you."

On getting out of the bazaar on to the sandy road by
the river, I let Lunatic out a bit, and he went freely, and his
paces were perfect. On the old course he showed me that
he could gallop in very fair form; and we got home finally
better friends than I expected.

On my return I found that my bearer with my baggage
and my own two horses also had arrived. He was
terribly dirty and travel-stained, and one horse had a bad
cut from a heel rope, and the other had a swelling as large
as a small turnip on his off knee. They would be no use
to me during the race week, that was certain. I am bound
to admit, however, that of my goods and chattels nothing
was lost and nothing was broken ; though dust seemed to
have penetrated into everything in an incredible and inde-
scribable manner. I was very glad to see them ; and even
pretended to believe my bearer's account of the unparal-
leled efforts he had made to avoid delays on the road.
It was vexing about the horses ; but it could not be helped.
Besides, I had Lunatic to occupy me for a time at any rate.

The next morning I found my way to Blake's as directed,
and so commenced one of those Indian friendships which in
out-of-the-way places ripen so rapidly into the most mature
intimacy. We drove down to the Collectorate Cutcherry
together, which I ] found as dilapidated and disreputable-
looking as the Criminal Court. Here I took a second oath

Civilians must know all Things. 107

to collect the revenue justly, etc., and not to accept any
gratification other than my lawful salary.

" The first thing you have to do," said Blake, " is to draw
up some rules for the cultivation of cotton." " Don't look
surprised," he added, seeing probably by my countenance
that I felt so. " A civilian must know, or pretend to know,
everything ; and it is as well that you should understand
this at once. Government thinks it right to introduce cot-
ton-planting here if it can. Here are two little pamphlets ;
you must read these, and draw up some fifteen or
twenty rules in the simplest language possible, which will
be translated into the vernacular and distributed to the
more enlightened ' zemindars,' with little packets of cotton
seed. I shall have to use what is called my ' moral influ-
ence ' to induce them to plant it and look after it, and then
I shall have to send a report on the result to Government
at the end of the season. Those zemindars who have suc-
ceeded in rearing any plants will be mentioned in the report,
and metaphorically patted on the head like good school-
boys ; and those who have not will probably be accused of
' apathy.' "

" Is the soil of Tirhoot supposed to be specially suited
for the growth of cotton ? " I asked.

" No," he replied ; " but Government has thought fit that
it should be introduced into India, and so a circular order
has been drawn up in the Secretariat and a sufficient num-
ber printed to allow copies for every district, and I have
got one like every other district executive. When you
become a Collector yourself you will find this system a little
troublesome. If an idea strikes any clever Secretary

10S Life in the Mofussil.

attached to the Government of India, the circular orders for
report go to the whole of India; but if it occurs to a mem-
ber of any of the Local Governments, as a rule, only the
officials within the local jurisdiction are worried. A short
time ago a clever Secretary in the Home Department of
the Government of India evolved the idea that something
might be done with the porpoises that roll about in the
Ganges. You have probably seen some. Consequently
every district executive officer in India was called upon
to send up a treatise on the ' Gangetic porpoise ' within
one month. As you may imagine, a good many of these
treatises were similar to that on ' Snakes in Ireland.' "

Here the Sherishtadar appeared with a mass of papers,
and informed Blake very deferentially that some urgent
work was waiting. Blake asked if there was any room
where I could sit and do any work. The Sherishtadar replied
in the negative, so it was arranged that I should come
to the Collectorate only on the days that Blake went to
the Criminal Court, that is, twice a week, and make use
of his Court room. " Government," he said, " ought to have
sufficient accommodation for its officers ; though I am not
prepared to assert that it loses much at present by not
having a room in which you can exercise your talents to-day.
You have seen that new Courts are in progress, and I hope
that in the course of a year or so this rather disreputable
state of things will be obviated. In the mean time you can
go to the Criminal Court and see if there is any work, and,
if not, you can draw up your cotton rules. And here are
some examination papers on revenue matters, which you
had better look through and see if you can answer. You

Secretariat Circulars. 109

can take my dog-cart and send it back here when you have
done with it."

I went away much chagrined at my utter want of import-
ance, and thought how very unnecessary my eager hurry
to get to my station had been. It was a consolation, how-
ever, to observe the deference with which all the clerks,
mookhtyars, and hangers-on about the Court treated me,
and led me to understand that my possible future import-
ance was fully acknowledged.

CHAPTER V.

AT MOZUFFERPORE.

FORMAL CALLS.— FURNITURE. — A CURIOUS OPERATION.— AN AFTER-
NOON'S SPORT. — A REVENUE CASE.— A SUNDAY'S WOLF-HUNT. —
END OF CASE OF LAKSHMEE TELINEE. — MOOKHTYARS AND WIT-
NESSES.— THE RACE-MEETING.— HOT WEATHER. — NATIVE CHRIS-
TIANS.— NATIVE VISITORS.— A SOCIAL CONTRETEMPS.

At the Criminal Court there happened to be no case
suited to my limited powers, and so I went my way home,
and set myself to draw up my rules for the cultivation
of cotton. The task was much easier than I anticipated,
and I was able to complete and send them over to Blake
by the evening, who complimented me on my expedi-
tion when I met him on the Old Course, taking the usual
evening drive, while I was exercising Lunatic. That Old
Course was rather dreary after the Mall of Calcutta, with
at the most four equipages of different kinds, and per-
haps three equestrians.

However I met Darville, who informed me that he had
received permission to rejoin his old appointment and his
wife ; but that though he intended to stay in Tirhoot until
after the race meeting, he must send his traps off at once.
Would I put him up until his departure ?

Of course I was only too delighted to have a companion
in my loneliness, and he agreed to come into residence
that very evening at dinner-time.

Mofttssil Furniture. 1 1 1

The next morning Darville suggested, as we were driving
to Cutcherry, that I should take his dog-cart and make
a round of formal calls ; for he said, " You've been here
nearly a week now, and it should be done." Accordingly
I went round, and called on the Doctor, Colville the
planter, and two Deputy Collectors. The Judge had left,
and his successor had not arrived. Blake did not require
any further formal call, and Darville was living with me, so
that this social duty was easily performed. The forth-
coming races formed an excellent topic of conversation ;
and as every lady seemed to know Lunatic's character,
and a certain amount of interest was evinced with reference
to my proceedings in connection with him, I returned
home somewhat elated, bringing also an invitation for
Darville to accompany me to dine at the Doctor's that
evening. /

One feature that particularly struck me in my visit, was
the incongruous nature of the furniture. Bertram had
brought his from Calcutta, and devoted some little atten-
tion to its selection ; but he was quite the exception. In
all the other houses, the articles had been got together
as they could be purchased from persons leaving the sta-
tion from time to time ; and as these had previously
been obtained in a similar fashion, the general result
can be imagined. The only new pieces of furniture that
ever appeared to make their way to the station, were
the cane chairs used on board ship on the way out
from England, which, with the aid occasionally of a
cushion or an anti-macassar, formed no unimportant
addition to the drawing-room suite. The mahogany,

1 1 2 Life in the Mofussil.

where existent, was the blackest of the black, from age
I suppose, and gave some of the dining-rooms rather a
funereal appearance. It had been brought into the dis-
trict, I imagine, about the time of the Permanent Settle-
ment ; but whence, it would be difficult to say. None
of the houses, however, could be said to be over-fur-
nished, and there was space enough to move about
without knocking things down.

The dinner at the Doctor's was pleasant enough, the
hostess pretty, graceful, and clever, and also musical. The
Colvilles and Blakes, with one or two others, were there.
There had come too, as a guest, an irregular cavalry
officer, a cousin of Bertram's, who had intended to spend
a portion of his leave with him, not knowing of his transfer
elsewhere. With the usual Indian hospitality, he had been
asked to stay at the Doctor's as long as he liked. He
seemed likely to prove a useful acquisition during the
race week, for he was not only great at riding, but good at
theatricals, and moreover fond of getting them up. It was
settled before the ladies left the room, that we should have
some " tableaux vivants," and that he should draw up a
programme in the next two days.

Over our wine, the Doctor told us of a curious operation
he had performed that day, viz., the amputation of the leg
of a Hindu lady of rank, without seeing any portion of her
person except that operated upon. The limb had been
pushed through a hole in a curtain, and a high-caste Brah-
min who knew something of medicine had assisted in the
administration of chloroform, etc.

I learned from the conversation that ensued, that native

A Curious Operation. 1 1 3

ladies look upon their confinement behind the purdah as
a badge of rank, and also as a sign of chastity, and are
exceedingly proud of it. In fact, they consider that being
seen by any man outside the prescribed number of rela-
tives is equivalent to the very extreme of dishonour, and
would prefer death as an alternative. The husbands, too,
are of the same way of thinking, which is perhaps more
easily to be understood.

After dinner, we had some good music. Bertram sang
well ; Mrs. Macpherson was an accomplished musician ;
and, as it was the cold season, the piano was in tune.
While listening and enjoying myself, I wondered why it
was that so many writers about Indian society should
think it necessary to describe it only in caricature. Here
was a party of people of cultivated tastes, and quite as free
from eccentricities as any other similar number one might
find in a drawing-room at home ; and this I found to be
the case oftener than not. The conversation, possibly,
might not be on exactly the same topics ; but I could
venture to state that it would not be more frivolous than
that of an English drawing-room. Our relatives in Eng-
land have, at best, a very incorrect idea of our mode of
living in India. It need not be rendered still more so by
portraying every individual as foolish or vulgar.

Just as we were saying Good-night, Colville said, "I
have got excellent 'khabar' (news) of quail about five
miles out ; will you come and shoot some to-morrow ?"

I began to demur, like all young civilians, on the score
of pressure of work, and finally said, I must see if Darville
could spare me. I saw an almost imperceptible smile curl

VOL. I. I

ii4 Life in the Mofussil.

his lip, for he had seen a good many young civilians, as he
replied, " Darville is coming too ; he can get away early
to-morrow, and if you will send your clothes up to the
factory, and give us the pleasure of your company at
dinner, we shall be very glad."

Of course I was very glad ; and the next afternoon, at
three, we found ourselves in Darville's dog-cart, having
picked up Colville on the way to the scene of action.
After driving some six miles, we came upon about a
hundred men, seated in two rows on the roadside, all with
latties (long sticks of bamboo) in their hands. They were
presided over by two men with red turbans, and proved to
be a lot of Colville's coolies — men who worked in the
indigo vats during the manufacturing season, and who
were always at hand when required to make themselves
useful. They lived in the neighbouring villages, and on
this occasion had been summoned to "sweep the jungle,"
as the native expression is, for the purposes of our sport.
As we dismounted from the vehicle, they all stood up and
salaamed ; and at an order from Colville moved off in
the direction of a piece of grass of some two or three
acres in extent. This was bordered by crops of oats, and
"urhur," a species of pea (Revalenta Arabica), which af-
forded good feeding-ground for the game in the mornings
and evenings, while in the middle of the day they took
shelter in the friendly grass. The country is covered in
this way with grasses and cold-weather crops, with occa-
sional patches of fallow land, and we only had to walk
from one grass patch to another.

The beaters formed in lines, and commenced making a

An Afternoons Sport. 115

noise that to me was at first quite bewildering, as we
moved through the grass. They seemed to understand
that it was necessary to keep line ; and every individual
seemed to think it proper to admonish the rest on this
point, by shouting "nine karo," "nine rakho," "barabar,"
" make line, keep line," — " evenly." The natives always
putting n for 1, and 1 for n, in pronouncing English words
commencing with these letters. If a bird was flushed,
they all said, " urgaya," — " it has flown," which certainly
did seem unnecessary. And yet all this noise was really
requisite, for the quail lay like stones, and continually
got up behind us, after we must all but have trodden
upon them. J

However, out of the first piece of grass we bagged
three-and-a-half brace, and ought to have got more ;
but I missed four out of five shots, bewildered with
the noise, and puzzled with the flight of the bird, which
I had never shot at before. It goes as if hurled from
a catapult for the first twenty yards, and then flies slowly,
and is easy to hit, though small. In the next piece
of grass a hare got up, and then the self-restraint of
the beaters gave way ; every man started in pursuit,
notwithstanding the objurgations of their red-turbaned
" mates," or overseers ; and the latties were used with
considerable skill, with skill indeed very humiliating to
me, for the animal passing near me, I managed to miss it,
when a beater near me flung his latti at it, and killed it.
It was a relief to me to hear Colville's voice rising loud in
abuse of this man, and of all his female relatives, for daring
to wipe my eye, so to speak ; and all the beaters were

V

i io Life in the Mofussil.

admonished that there would be no hope of any "bak-
sheesh " at the end of the day, should such conduct recur.
However it did recur the very next time, and every time
that a hare was started ; and I always found that nothing
could keep these beaters in order on such occasions.

In about two hours, or a little more, we had bagged
twenty-seven brace of quail and hares, a leash of black
partridges, three plover and five snipe, a very satisfactory
bag, in my opinion ; though Colville seemed to think we
ought to have got more quail, as it was such a good season ;
and he told us of four guns in another part of the district,
some day or two previously, having bagged no brace in
the same time.

In the course of our shooting I observed that some
fifteen or twenty men with blue puggrees had joined the
beaters, and worked very zealously for us. These proved
to be the chowkeydars, or village policemen, who had
come to give their assistance on hearing that the
" Hakims " were of the shooting party. The village
chowkeydar is a somewhat curious functionary ; but more
will be said about him hereafter. It was a matter of
some surprise to me, however, that this should be looked
upon as part of their duty.

Notwithstanding all his threats, Colville gave orders that
a few pice should be distributed to the beaters, and we left
them all jabbering in an excited way round the red-
turbaned mates, as we mounted three of Colville's horses
that had been sent out for us and started for a delightful
canter home, across country. The large area of good
riding ground in Tirhoot makes it one of the pleasantest

Collectorate Work. 1 1 7

districts under the administration of the Lieut-Governor ot
Bengal ; and as I drove home in the moonlight with Dar-
ville after dinner, I thought that frequent afternoons of
such perfectly free sport, with no keepers and no game
laws, and such pleasant rides back in the cool of the
evening, would make life anything but disagreeable.

The next day, as Blake had to go to the Foujdarree
Cutcherry, I took my seat in his room at the Collectorate,
and a perfectly new vista of work opened before me. In
the first place I signed a prodigious quantity of papers,
most of them being copies of orders given by Blake or of
original documents. I must have been at least an hour
thus engaged, signing as quickly as ever I could. The
ministerial officers generally bring all such papers to the
Assistant Sahib (officers in my position), as it is one of the
few ways in which they can be useful. Nowadays, how-
ever, the Sherishtadar's signature is allowed to authenticate
copies of documents, and the Assistant is thus spared so
much drudgery.

This over, the Sherishtadar informed me that some 100'
Dakhil Kharij cases had been placed on my file. This
sounded somewhat important, and it is necessary to ex-
plain the nature of these cases. In 1793, Lord Cornwallis
enacted the Regulation I. of 1793, which declared the
Government revenue assessed on all estates included in the
decennial settlement just expired to be unalterable and
fixed for ever. But as these estates might be sold or
divided, it was considered necessary that the Government
should be furnished with information on such points, in
order to enable its officers to assess the revenue in accord-

1 1 S Life in the Mo/ussil.

ance with the rules laid clown in the above-mentioned
Regulation ; and it was accordingly enacted in Regula-
tion XLVIII. of the same year, that all changes in the
ownership, cither in part or whole, should be, under pain of
fine, notified to the Collector and entered in a Register
prepared for the purpose.

Dakliil KJiarij merely means entry and erasure, i.e., the
entry of the new proprietor's name and erasure of the old.
This was useful to enable district officers to know who
were the actual owners of property in their districts ; but
for the purposes of the collection of the revenue it did
not much matter, as by the present laws the owners are
compelled to pay into the treasury the revenue assesssed
on their estates, before sunset on the days fixed in each
year by the Board of Revenue. If the amount due is not
paid, the estate in default is put up to auction and sold to
the highest bidder. The amount due, with costs, is deducted
from the sum realized, and the remainder handed over to
the owner on his application. This being the case, this
useful Regulation had been allowed to fall into abeyance,
and was used chiefly by owners or would-be owners, in
order that the entries in the Government Register might
be cited as proof of possession in the civil courts in cases of
disputed succession or purchase.

The procedure is, that on an application for registration
and mutation of names, a copy of the same is posted at the
Government Courts in the district in which the estate is
situated, and also at some conspicuous place on the estate
itself ; and any person objecting to the same is warned to
come forward and state such objection in the Collector's

Dakhil Kharij Cases. 119

Court before the expiration of one month from the date of
publication of the notice. In cases where no such objec-
tion is filed, mere formal orders for registration of the new
and erasure of the old owner's name are passed. Many of
these cases now on my file were without objection so that it
was possible to dispose of twenty or thirty in an hour.

In cases where objections were filed, the only point I had
to look to was that of "possession." It might be thought
that this was not such a very difficult thing to decide ; but
in fact it proved to be much more difficult to arrive at
than the question of real title, into which I was not allowed
to go. Occasionally it was impossible to come to a con-
clusion either way ; and this was not altogether unnatural,
as it sometimes turned out that neither of the applicants
was in possession, both of them being merely " pretend-
ants." Government suffered nothing by the absence of a
decision, for no mutation of names then took place ; and if
the Government revenue was not paid by somebody, it did
not matter by whom, the estate was put up to auction, as
mentioned above.

The question then suggests itself, Why take any trouble
at all in disputed cases ? Why not refer the disputants at
once to the Civil Courts which had power to dispose of the
whole matter ? The answer always given is, that being a
paternal Government, we wish to check improper litigation
and assist the parties in the right as much as possible. The
chances were, that if we could come to a correct decision as
to the party in possession, we caused the onus probandi,
in the Civil Court, supposing litigation should be carried
thither, to fall on the wrongful claimant. But until I had

1 20 Life in the Mqfussil.

gained some experience, these cases used to bother me
horribly, and I did not at first understand that the coming
to a decision was not a matter of vital importance, or that
in tact my orders were not decisions, but merely recommen-
dations for the approval of the Collector, for that I had no
actual powers in the matter.

But though this was so, the litigants fought the matter
as obstinately before me as though I were the final tri-
bunal, and doubtless with reason ; for as I gained ex-
perience my orders would have considerable weight. I
recollect that in the first disputed case brought before me
there were fifty-seven witnesses on one side, and forty-
three on the other : both parties had paid in the last in-
stalment of Government revenue, and both parties had
paid income tax, and receipts were filed by both in proof
of possession. All the witnesses on one side swore that
they paid rent to one party, and all on the other side swore
that they paid rent to the other party. Each party had
on more than one occasion prosecuted the other side for
criminal trespass on some of the lands comprised in the
estate ; and each had been criminally convicted and fined,
the decisions in the cases being also filed. This was
enough to puzzle Solomon ; for I don't think an offer to
divide the land would have settled the question, and it fairly
beat me.

I turned, in despair, to the head native clerk who was
sitting beside me, and who had been assisting to interpret
difficult terms, and otherwise helping me to wade through
the case, and said, " What can I do ? "

He, I feel sure, from the light of subsequent experience

A ytidicial Puzzle. 121

must have taken a bribe from one of the parties (possibly
the right one), for he said : " The decision is in the hands
of your Highness ; but something must be decided, or what
will become of the Government revenue ? " knowing full
well that the Government revenue was safe enough.

I finally decided that the party who had brought the
fifty-seven witnesses should be entered in the Register —
rather an unsafe point on which to found a decision ; but it
seemed to me the only salient-point of difference on which
I could seize to give any reason at all for my order. The
whole case was fought over again before the Collector, who
thought my order wrong ; it was then taken on appeal
before the Commissioner at Patna, who confirmed the Col-
lector's decision, and read the other party a little paternal
lecture (I saw his decision) on attempting to use this regu-
lation for wrong purposes ; but curiously enough, when the
thing was taken on appeal before the Board of Revenue in
Calcutta, they reversed the Commissioner's order, and con-
firmed that originally recommended by me. I am sure I
don't know who was right ; but I am inclined to think that
the Collector probably knew more about the actual facts
than anybody else. But after all, this was only the com-
mencement of real litigation, for no right or title was deci-
ded by all that had gone before.

My own impression is, that it is a mistake to encourage
the people to fight these matters in courts that have no
power to dispose of them finally, and that the only benefit
arising from the system is to give more work to Assistant
Collectors.

This was the first hard day's work I had had in office,

[22 Life in the Mofussil.

and I was positively tired out at the end of it ; but a good
gallop on Lunatic, who was really becoming very amenable,
soon drove away the heaviness of " Cutchcrry."

The next day being Sunday, I had the opportunity ot
seeing all our society assembled in our little church, about
as large as a good-sized drawing-room. The congregation
was swelled in numbers by some visitors who had already
arrived for the approaching races, to commence on the
Tuesday ; most of them planters in the interior of the
Tirhoot District, and some from the neighbouring Chupra
and Chumparun. Altogether, I should think there were
fifty Christians present, of whom over forty were white.
With the exception of a very few, the native Christians
in the town were either Catholics or attendants at the
church of the Lutheran Mission established here. Blake
presided at the harmonium, and Darville assisted the
v clergyman by reading the lessons.

The service over, a very curious assemblage of vehicles
appeared to convey the members of the congregation
to their respective homes, varying from the Doctor's
neatly-appointed Calcutta-built barouche and pair (Blake's
house was just across the road, and he and his family
walked home) to the lop-sided, forward-tilted, creaking
dog-cart built by the young assistant indigo-planter at
his own out-factory, with his own materials, and after
his own design. This conveyance was as a rule drawn
by a ferocious-looking and screeching animal, which was
usually intensely anxious to start until its owner had
taken his seat, and would then obstinately refuse to
move. I have known more than an hour passed in fruit-

A Sunday Wolf Hunt. 123

less efforts to make such an animal go on ; and finally
the brute has jumped forward with such a bound as to
break all the harness (probably not very new or strong)
and gallop off perfectly free, leaving its disconsolate
owner hanging over the splashboard with a couple of
broken shafts for contemplation. However, on this occa-
sion nothing extraordinary happened, and all got home
safely, to wish, like myself, I suppose, that Sunday was
over.

Wherever the Anglo-Saxon congregates, there is a
terrible dulness about Sunday. As a Parisian lady once
said to me, " You English on Sundays appear to be rather
Pharisaical Jews than Protestants;" and this sort of beha-
viour we carry with us, for the most part, even to India.
In Calcutta it is thought wicked, or at any rate it is not
etiquette, to ride on Sundays, any more than it is in Lon-
don, though it is quite the correct thing, morally and
socially, to drive on the Mall. In the Mofussil we were
not quite so strict ; or at any rate the distinction between
riding and driving was not so sharply drawn, and so the Old
Course on this particular evening might almost be called .
lively. There were at least fifteen vehicles of all sorts,
and about as many equestrians. One of my Arabs had so
far got over the bad effects of his journey that I had ven-
tured to take him out for a Sunday's ride. I was walking
quietly along by the side of Colville's dog-cart in which he
was driving his wife and little girl, when all of a sudden he
started up with a loud " tally-ho," and as I looked in the
direction in which he was pointing with his whip I saw an
animal about the size of a mastiff going- at a lumbering

1 24 Life in the Mofussil.

canter over the centre of the plain round which we were
circling.

It at once occurred to me it was a wolf. These animals
are a great scourge in Tirhoot in the cold season. Every-
body else seemed to see it too, and simultaneously vehicles
and equestrians started off in hot pursuit of the animal.
This Old Course (as mentioned above) was bounded on one
side by the lake, and another by the new stream of the
river ; and between the river and the lake was an embank-
ment which formed a road to Colville's factory. On the
lake side of this embankment, where the lake grew shallow,
was a large patch of reed and grass jungle, and for this the
wolf was making. Some of us tried to cut him off from
this, and in fact we made a sort of effort to surround him.
Sunday was forgotten, and Colville drove off at a gallop
to get spear and rifle; and two deerhounds which happened
to be following their master, another planter, in his even-
ing ride, were also in full chase. The wolf, however, though
he seemed to be going very slowly and without exertion,
kept his distance from all of us, except the deerhounds ;
but though they came up with him, they were afraid to
tackle him, and to our great regret we saw him finally
gallop into the jungle and disappear. It was just dusk
and the jungle was very thick and swampy, so that nothing
more could be done, and we had to return baffled to our
homes. My Arab was dead lame again, as I had forgotten
all caution, and he himself had been very excited in the
chase.

Two planters came in to dinner with us; and the conver-
sation naturally turned on wolves, and their speed and

Wolves in Tirhoot. 125

powers of endurance. One of these told us he had suc-
ceeded in riding down and spearing a wolf ; but he said he
had no European witnesses of the feat, and he found his
story generally doubted. But he assured us it was true ;
that he had started the wolf one morning while riding over
his indigo cultivation, and that it had taken the line for his
factory, that his servants had seen it and seen him coming,
and got a second horse ready saddled, and that by this
means he had been enabled to overtake it. I myself had
subsequently experience of the difficulty of such a feat, for I
frequently had the chance of riding after wolves, but never
came up with one. They keep up the same sort of lumber-
ing canter ; and if their pursuer by an effort increases
his pace, they increase theirs too, but apparently without
effort, and go on until the horse is absolutely tired out.

In the cold weather in Tirhoot they pack, and attack
people at night, if alone, or in twos, or even threes.
About eighteen months after this, when I had charge of
the Durbhungah subdivision, it was stated in one of my
police reports that a man and his wife and child had been
attacked by seven wolves after dusk, within half a mile
of their village, and the two latter carried off. I sent for
the man to interrogate him personally, and he told me that
he and his wife with their little child were returning from
a neighbouring village to their homes, shortly after sunset.
He was in front, and the wife carrying the child behind,
when he suddenly heard a scream, and turning round saw
two wolves had seized his wife and thrown her down. He
had a " latti " (bamboo stick) in his hand, and ran to drive
them off, when five others came up and he was afraid, and

126 Life in the Mofussil.

ran to a mango-tree close by and climbed up it. There
he was forced to be a spectator of the horrible sight of his
wife and child being torn to pieces. He described it as
being very quickly over ; but it was a very long time before
he could summon up courage to come down from his tree
and make his way to his house.

It was a horrible story ; but I really believe that I felt
the actual horror of it more keenly than the narrator did.
It seemed to me that his conduct deserved to be censured
as cowardly ; but from the countenances of those around
me (the story was told in open Court), I don't think any-
body else sympathized with me in this feeling. A woman's
life was of very little consequence, the infant was a girl,
and probably his fellow villagers thought he was quite
right to act as he did. Tirhoot is a highly cultivated
district, and is frequently called the "garden of India;" but
there are large patches of grass jungle used for thatching
purposes, and these afford shelter to the wolves, which
come down in the cold weather from the neighbouring
kingdom of Nepaul.

The next morning I was in good time in office to take
up the adjourned case of Lakshmee Telinee. The accused,
a fine strapping-looking fellow, denied that he had been
anywhere near the village on the day in question, and
stated that he had witnesses to prove that he had been
present at a marriage ceremony, that had been celebrated
in a village some fifteen miles distant. On behalf of the
plaintiff, Lakshmee Telinee, four witnesses were present,
who all swore, in almost the same words, to the facts as
stated by her. They were subjected to lengthy cross-

Native Witnesses. 127

examination by the mookhtyars for the accused, two
being retained by him ; and they stood this test remark-
ably well, considering the curious nature of the questions
put ; though my surprise at their readiness gave way when
I found that almost the same questions were asked in all
cases of this nature, and that the witnesses had all been
prepared to expect them, and furnished with answers
accordingly.

The first question was usually, "Are you any relation to
the plaintiff?" Answered always in the negative, whatever
the fact might be.

2nd. " Who came up first ? — you or the other wit-
nesses ? "

The first witness had usually appeared on the scene first.

3rd Question. " When the assault took place, were you
standing on the north, south, east, or west of the parties ? "

There was always a prompt answer to this question,
and to those that followed as to the relative geographical
positions of the other witnesses. In this part of the
country the natives always talked of east and west, and
not of right or left. On one occasion, when out shooting,
my chuprassie brought me a piece of lighted dried cow-
dung (the ordinary fuel) to light my cigar. I had applied
the end of my cigar to a corner not so well lighted as the
other. So he said, " Will your Highness be pleased to put
your cigar a little to the west ?"

Of course, as I gained experience, I disallowed this class
of question ; but at first I felt bound to go through it
all, and spent a long time over each of these wretched
petty cases.

[28 Life in the Mofussil.

Another set of stock questions was about the dates.
The lower class of villagers know very little of dates ;
and though they could generally state glibly enough the
date on which they witnessed the alleged Occurrence, and
the date on which they were giving evidence, they were
easily puzzled by asking them the date next Thursday
or last Saturday ; this, of course, being a point on which
it was not possible to furnish them with answers before-
hand.

Another curious point on which questions were always
framed was, the length of time during which the com-
plainant remained senseless, "behosh," for the assault
always rendered him senseless, and it was generally
alleged that this state lasted an hour or two. In the pre-
sent case, there were one or two slips : and the mookh-
tyars for the defence then addressed me, pointing out that
one of the witnesses had said that he stood to the east of
the parties, whereas the others had stated that he stood on
the north ; that another had averred the complainant had
remained senseless for one hour, whereas she had declared
she had been so for two.

I recollect, even as a novice, wanting to explain that
these were not material points: but my Hindustani was not
yet good enough, and I had to let them run on. How-
ever, it seemed that there was a prima facie case made out,
so I issued summonses for the witnesses for the accused.
These were not returnable for a week ; but I may as well
state here, that they duly appeared, and all swore to the
alibi. They said they had met the accused on the
date of the alleged assault many miles from the scene

Mookhtyars. 129

of the occurrence, and asked him where he was going,
and he had replied, to a marriage ceremony. There was
a lengthy cross-examination of these also, and a final
address on the part of the mookhtyars, who seemed as
hot about the matter as their clients, and whom I had
continually to call to order for interrupting each other.

Indeed, I fear, as a general rule, that the Court of a
young Assistant Magistrate is seldom that scene of per-
fect decorum that it should be. In those days anybody
might be a mookhtyar. There were no rules of admission,
and any person passing by the Court might turn in and
attempt to make an honest penny by pleading, if he
could secure a client and present a power to appear
written on a stamped paper of the value of one shilling.

However, shortly afterwards, an Act was passed which
excluded from practice as pleaders and attorneys all per-
sons who had not passed an examination and complied
with certain rules. A tremendous outcry was raised
against this ; and the Government, with its usual leniency,
gave orders that all those previously practising should
be allowed to continue to do so, unless there was some-
thing special against them, and the Act should only apply
to new comers. The result was, that for many years little
real good was apparent, and the Criminal Courts swarmed
with these uneducated pettifoggers, who eagerly competed
for the custom of any one who had any sort of grudge
against his neighbour, and used all efforts to foment
quarrels on all possible grounds.

In this case I was preparing to write my judgment, for
we were bound to record reasons for our decision when

VOL. I. K

130 Life in the Mo/ussil.

both parties, who had retired for a few minutes, burst into
court again, saying "Razeenama khudawind," — "Compro-
mise, my lord," and it appeared they had settled the
matter among themselves. It is legal in petty cases to
allow a complaint to be withdrawn ; and I was delighted
to allow it in this case, for I really did not know what
was the truth, though my subsequent experience tells me
that probably the whole affair was a verbal dispute about
the rate at which the oil was sold, and that all the
details of the assault and the defence about the mar-
riage ceremony were false.

I believe that even in true cases of this sort the wit-
nesses have very seldom seen the facts to which they
depose. I do not think it occurs to a native complainant
to select as his witnesses those who have actual knowledge
of the occurrence ; but he seeks out those of his friends
whom he can trust, and can induce for a very moderate
consideration, to undergo the trouble of learning their
story and appearing in Court. These men, again, seldom
discriminate between what they have seen and what they
have heard, so that they consider it no harm to state in
Court that they have seen what their friend, the com-
plainant, aided by his mookhtyar, had described to them.

In fact, it is more difficult to arrive at the truth in these
petty matters than in those of far greater importance, and
yet these fall to the lot of the most inexperienced magis-
trates to try ; for, after all, wrong decisions are of less
consequence here than elsewhere, and until they have
passed their examinations there are few cases of other
descriptions with which they can be entrusted.

A Race Lottery. 131

And yet these are so numerous that their good or
bad management exercises a serious influence on the
criminal " returns " of the district (to be spoken of here-
after), and on the happiness of a large number of the
people.

On strolling over to the Racket Court in the afternoon,
I found quite a crowd of people assembled, chiefly planters
from the interior of the district ; for the races were to
commence on the following morning, and the first race
ordinary was to be held at the Station Billiard Room that
evening. There were to be five days' racing, on alternate
days ; and it was also intended there should be five dances,
dignified with the name of balls, on the evening of each
race day.

Nearly all the betting in India is done by means of
lotteries ; and I was initiated into the process that evening.
There were separate lotteries for each race to be run on the
following day. On this occasion these generally consisted
of fifty tickets of 8 rs. (equal to 16 shillings) each. When
filled, the names of the ticket-holders were drawn from one
hat, and those of the horses starting from another. Each
horse was then put up to auction, and the drawer could
either buy it in or allow it to be sold. If the former, he had
to pay the price bid to the lottery ; if the latter, he received
the price bid, but the purchaser had to pay a similar
amount to the lottery. Further, it was the custom fre-
quently to throw dice for tickets, the loser paying, and the
winner and loser both sharing the ticket, so that a good
deal of gambling could be had for a small sum of money. A

The hack race, in which Lunatic was to run, was fixed

132 Life in the Mofussil.

for the following day ; and as there were six starters, the
lottery on the race was worth winning. The number of
tickets taken made it worth 25 gold mohurs, or .£40, an(J
the various horses sold in the aggregate for another ^20.
Lunatic, after a long pause without a bid, was knocked
down to Macpherson himself for one gold mohur, showing
that he even had little confidence in horse or rider ; and
from the remarks around me I could understand that
Lunatic was considered altogether out of the betting.

The next morning Darville drove me down to the
Course, as all racing in India is done before the sun gets
high and hot. The race-stand was of very simple con-
struction, consisting of eight masonry pillars, on the top of
which a wooden flooring was laid, with a mat wall at the
back and wooden railing in front, the whole surmounted by
a thatched roof. The spaces between the masonry pillars
below were filled in with bamboo matting, and formed a
room where coffee was served. The appointments of the
weighing enclosure were equally simple, and a longish
range of bamboo mat erections at the rear of the stand
served as temporary stables for horses in training.

There were four events on the card for the day ; the said
card having been printed by the local shopkeepers, Messrs.
Jones & Co., to whom nothing came amiss in the way of
business, from selling tinned provisions and arm chairs to
building a dog-cart or furnishing a funeral. Indeed, I
don't know what our little society would have done without
them ; and, considering the monopoly they enjoyed and
the risk of loss they incurred from deterioration of goods
not quickly sold, I think their articles were good and their

The Races. 133

prices cheap, and I trust they have by this time made*-
their fortunes.

The hack race was the last of the day, so I had time to
go into the stand, where I was able to count seventeen
ladies, which fact enabled me to look forward to that
evening's ball with cheerful anticipation. One lady had
ridden in with her husband fifty miles the day before, and
told me she was quite disappointed when she found Col-
ville's dog-cart waiting for them ten miles out on the road,
as she would like to have done the whole distance on
horseback. She was certainly none the worse for the
journey, for I danced with her that evening, and a lighter
partner I could not hope to find. There were two or three
ladies from Dinapoor, two from Patna, and the remaining
twelve were furnished by our own district.

One great feature of the occasion was the arrival of
Colonel Barlow, who commanded an irregular cavalry
regiment at Soogowlie, some eighty miles distant, and had
brought in, not only several horses, but a pack of fox-
hounds. He was an eccentric man ; a woman hater, at any
rate a hater of European ladies ; and his two officers, who
had also come in, were also bachelors.

After the second race had been run, Macpherson came
to me and said, " You had better get weighed, and mount
quietly, and get Lunatic away from the crowd and noise.
You can walk him about, and when the others are about
ready I will come down and tell you. He knows my pony,
and won't think that anything unusual is going on."

I took his advice. The distance was only three-quarters
of a mile, and so the starting-post was well away from the

154 Life in tJic Mofussil.

stand. It seemed a long time before Macpherson's burly
form appeared cantering down towards me. " Come
quietly," he said ; " I don't know what instructions to give,
except to get the brute to start and keep him straight, and
then you may win."

As we came to the post we found the other horses just
coming up. Arkwright was on a mare called Juanita; his
brother on a horse called Jericho ; Colville, who had rid-
den in every race of the morning, was on something of his
own ; and the other two horses were ridden also by their
owners, indigo planters. As it happened, I drew No. 4
place, which put three horses on one side of me and two
on the other. Lunatic saw something new was up, and
began to make a brute of himself, neighing, kicking, yell-
ing, and rearing, in a way that made me a terror to the
rest. Jericho was somewhat of a similar nature, and
diverted some of the indignation from my animal to him-
self. But after several attempts at a pitched battle between
the two, we got the animals in line, and the word to start
was given. Juanita was on my near side ; and as the for-
ward movement was made, Lunatic made a rush at her
open-mouthed ; but Arkwright, who was as cool as a
cucumber, gave him a tremendous crack over the head
with his whip, which made him swerve to the off, where he
was brought up by Colville's knee, who merely ejaculated,
"D — d brute!" and shot ahead. However, the two
shocks combined had a good effect, for he simply took the
bit between his teeth and ran away with me to the end of
the race ; and, being really much the fastest horse, came
in an easy winner. I believe he would have got off the

The Ball. 135

course opposite the stand, but the railings kept him in ; and
after going about half a mile past the post, I was enabled
to pull him up, much blown and quite subdued. The by-
standers gave him a wide berth coming into the enclosure ;
but I don't think he had any vicious intention left in him.
My weight was all right ; and while receiving the congratu-
lations of Macpherson and others, I felt as proud as if I
had won the Derby.

" I believe that crack on the head from me made you
win/' said Arkwright, who, I now discovered, had been
second in the race ; and I really think it had a good deal to
do with it.

There was now a movement homewards, for bath and
breakfast, after which Darville hurried off to office, telling
me he didn't expect any work from me during the meeting ;
and I hastened to the Doctor's for the rehearsal of our
tableaux vivants, which were to come off on the Friday
evening. I am afraid we did more laughter than anything
else ; and poor Bertram's temper as manager must have
been sorely tried ; but his apparent equanimity was beyond
all praise.

The ball in the evening was to take place in Dar-
ville's empty house. It was to be what is called " camp
fashion/' Every resident in the station had contributed
something in the way of furniture, and each person brought
his own eating and drinking implements. The eatables
and drinkables were supplied from the race fund. The
resulting appearance was motley, but picturesque. Every
one of the seventeen ladies danced ; and though, of course,
the preponderance of males was great, that of dancing

156 Life in the Mofussil.

men was just sufficient to make the ladies feel that they
were each and all sought after, and so make them tho-
roughly enjoy themselves. Many of the assistant indigo
planters were exceedingly bucolic, both in appearance and
behaviour, and hung in clusters round the doorways, like
the characters described in the entertainment at the farm-
house in " Sylvia's Lovers," by Mrs. Gaskell. Supper was
announced about 1 a.m., and some confusion was caused
by the desire of each kitmutgar to get his own employer
furnished with plates, etc., and served with eatables before
any one else. The shy politeness with which young men,
who had certainly derived no enjoyment from ladies'
society all the evening, proffered their knives and forks to
damsels who had neglected to bring any of their own,
savoured of chivalry.

It was amusing to see three pretty girls, daughters of an
indigo planter of a remote part of the district, drinking
champagne out of three pint pewters, which they had
brought with them as safer than glass. They were clearly
accustomed to "camp fashion." Nevertheless, the supper
was probably more enjoyed than if it had been supplied in
the best style by Gunter. Dancing was recommenced with
extra vigour ; and I, with most of the others, did not get
home till 4 a.m.

Colonel Barlow's hounds were to meet at the Planters'
Club at 5-3°> as all hunting has to be done as soon before
and after sunrise as possible, as the scent soon ceases to lie.
The Colonel made no allowances for men who were idiots
enough to sit up to dance ; and as we could expect no con-
sideration for our late hours, it was not worth while going

The Hounds. 137

to bed. Colville had offered me a mount ; and after getting
into boots and breeches, Darville and I drove down to the
Club, where we found coffee and cheroots, and a large
number of horses being led about, of all sorts and sizes,
from the high-caste Arab and well-bred Australian to the
screaming country-bred pony of the youngest assistant
planter. At 5.30 punctually we moved off, though it was
not quite light ; but we had a mile to go down the road
before reaching any practicable cover, and no minute of
the early dawn could be spared.

We found, in the very first grass we drew, a good
straight-going jackal ; but the hounds were almost too
quick, and he was pulled down in ten minutes. It was a
very pleasant gallop, with some small ditches and banks
and one or two mud walls. But it was always possible to
get round the obstacles ; and I believe that the whole field
really enjoyed the run. The master was delighted with
our morning's sport, for by ten o'clock we had killed four
jackals and were on our way home. The pack had only
arrived from England some six weeks previously, and had
probably cost him not less than ^"iooo, all expenses of
journey, etc., included. I subsequently had some experi-
ence in getting out packs of hounds ; and, what with dis-
honest dealings in England, and losses on the voyage, the
result generally was not so satisfactory as in this case.^
Colonel Barlow was, what is very exceptional in India, a
man of independent fortune, who preferred being a despot
in a small way in India at the head of his regiment, to
leading a conventional life at home.

This sort of life lasted for ten days, and nobody seemed

[38 Life in the Mofussil.

to feel the want of sleep or rest, though the hours devoted
to the former, out of these 240, were very few indeed. On
Friday night our tableaux vivants took place, and were
pronounced a success ; but I am not sure that the audi-
ence, or at least the whole of it, could be called critical.
I appeared in two pictures ; in one as Rizzio, singing to
Mary (Mrs. Macpherson — who looked charming) ; and in
the other as murdered, the two assassins (Colville and
Blake) standing over me. Blake was behind Colville, and
in the spirit of mischief must needs give him a pinch just
as the curtain drew up. His struggles to avoid laughing
set me off, and I shook all over with restrained merriment.
Bertram, always prompt, had the curtain quickly lowered ;
and afterwards one of the more rustic members of our
audience congratulated me on my share of the perform-
ance, saying, " You did the death quiver splendidly."
\j On the following Thursday, the last racing day, there
were to be two steeple-chases. The course consisted of
artificial jumps, in which the changes were rung on banks
with ditches on the taking-off side, and ditto with ditto on
the landing side, and ditto with ditto on both sides. There
was one trench, about twelve feet wide, filled with water,
dignified with the name of " the brook." In addition to
the ordinary stakes, there was a prize for the winner of
the first race of a bracelet, subscribed for by all the bache-
lors present, and which he was to present to the lady he
might consider the belle of the meeting. It was a case of
owners up, and the ladies looked forward to the result with
considerable interest. An exception was made in favour
of Colonel Barlow, who declined to ride in person, but was

"/ Knew Your Father." 139

anxious to enter a horse ; and in consideration of all he had
done for the public amusement, was allowed to do so, and
put up one of his subalterns. Perversely enough, he was
the winner ; and the rider had to give him the bracelet to
present, which he at first flatly refused to do. However,
he was at length persuaded to go up into the race-stand,
where all the ladies were seated in a state of great expect-
ation, and walking up to a young lady from Dinapore,
thrust the prize into her hand, saying, " Take this ; I
knew your father," and walked off without another word.

The general disappointment was mitigated by the an-
ticipation of the next race, in which there were no less
than ten starters. I had persuaded Macpherson, against
his will, to enter Lunatic, as I had tried him over most of
the jumps, and found that he was perfectly able to nego-
tiate them. Macpherson pointed out to me, that it was
very different doing this leisurely, and with a good deal
of coaxing, to going round the course at racing speed.

However, my previous success had made me very san-
guine, and the consequence was that I found myself at the
post with nine others, and we got off in rather a straggling
way ; but I suppose the starter despaired of doing any
better. Lunatic put his head down, and seemed deter-
mined to make a bolt of it. But he cleared the first jump,
— a bank with a ditch on the take-off side, — without an
attempt at a swerve; and this seemed to put him in a
good humour, for he cleared the next five or six in the
same way. The " brook " was the last jump but one ; and
by way of assistance to keep us straight, a small hedge of
hurdles, with boughs of trees stuck in them, had been

140 Life in the Mofussil.

made up on each side, to a length of some twenty or
thirty yards. Lunatic did not like entering this avenue ;
and. when he got to the edge of the brook, turned round,
and tried to jump the hedge. I don't recollect anything
more until I found Macpherson and one or two others
standing over me. But it seems that another rider had
come crash against me, and knocked both myself and
horse over. He had escaped unhurt, and so had Lunatic ;
but the ground was as hard as pavement, and I had fallen
outside the hedge and, as it turned out, broken my collar-
bone. Nothing very serious, but very annoying.

The next morning it was a case of " I told you so "
from Macpherson, who nevertheless sold Lunatic at a
good profit.

So ended my first race-meeting in India, which, up to
the time of my accident, I had thoroughly enjoyed. But
now came a dull time. I did not get well very quickly ;
and as all outsiders had left the station, and those who
remained were well occupied, the days of lying down and
keeping still, with nobody but native servants to speak
to, were long and dreary. In the meantime, there was a
" pig-sticking " meet in the neighbouring district of
Chuprah, from which came back reports of fierce boars
and thrilling incidents. After this, Blake, the Arkwrights
and Colville went on a shooting expedition to the
Terai in Nepaul, which is on the northern boundary of
Tirhoot — a fiat strip of country covered with grass, jungle,
and forest, at the foot of the line of hills which are the
commencement of the Himalayan range. They brought
back a tiger, a bear, and a boa-constrictor.

Change Quarters. 141

I, in the meantime, attempted to solace myself by read-
ing for my law examination, which was to come off in
March, at Patna ; but to which I was not able to go, and
consequently, could not present myself until the following
October.

Darville had gone, and his successor only stayed a month,
being promoted to be Magistrate of another neighbouring
district, Chumparun ; and his successor, Melville by
name, had arrived — a contemporary of mine at Eton,
though some two years my senior, now a married man
with a large family. Our meeting in this way was a
curious coincidence, and a great pleasure to both of us.

The new judge, Percival, was a grass widower, and
asked me to chum with him in his house on the lake.
Bertram was not to return to Mozufferpore, having . been
appointed a sort of roving Judge to do work in districts
that had fallen into arrear, and had sent instructions for
the sale of his goods and chattels ; so that this offer was
most acceptable, the more so as Percival was also an
Etonian, and an exceedingly pleasant, refined man, and
musical. My own belongings were very soon moved ; and
after the disposal of Bertram's effects, which gave me
occupation for a month or so, I regularly settled down
for the dreary dulness of the hot weather.

My work was not sufficient to occupy me for the long
days. Indeed, on an average, I did not get more than an
houi and a half daily ; and as, until I should pass my
examination, the importance and the very nature of the
cases I could try was very limited, the endless "assaults,"
varied only by the still more numerous " dakhil kharij "

142 Life in the Mofussil.

cases on the Collectoratc side, made me feel nauseated at
the sight of a mookhtyar or a suitor.

In India it is impossible to lie in bed late ; and I was
always up before 6 a.m. ; and on the mornings when the
" bobberee " pack went out, of which Macpherson was
" master," and I " whip," we used to be up by 4 a.m.
How well I remember the feeling of stifling heat, even at
that hour, and the misery of putting on breeches that were
a little shrunk with frequent washing. However, these
very hot mornings did not come till the middle of April,
and up to that time it was a very pleasant way of passing
the hours up till nine or ten, until bath and breakfast were
due. Knowing that work would come some time or
other, I always made it a principle to be at office about
eleven, and to do all that I had to perform without dawd-
ling ; and the consequence was, that I was generally free
for the day about 12.30. I then had to come home to a
lonely house and wish for evening.

It is true that I had my examination to read for ; but
that did not come off till October, and I felt certain of ac-
complishing that with very little labour. It would only be
in the laws and one language — Hindustani, that of the
district in which I was serving ; and I was prohibited from
taking up Bengali until I had passed in this. The fact of
having nothing to do that was compulsory, coupled with
the enervating heat, made me feel it distasteful to do any-
thing ; so I used to watch the shadows as they lengthened,
and wish, — not as Hezekiah, — that they would go forward,
and not back. About sunset Percival and the others
would come from their respective offices ; and then we had

Dreary Hot Weather. 143

rackets or a canter on the Course, and so passed the time
till dinner. But I shall never forget the dreariness of those
long hot afternoons. Occasionally I used to send a note
in to Melville, who, as Joint Magistrate, made over criminal
work to me, and beg him to give me something to do.
His reply was generally, — " Nothing within your powers.
Don't be discontented with your leisure, but make the
most of it while you have it/' And his advice was, no
doubt, correct.

One day, however, he sent me a case, wishing me joy of
it at the time, in which some seven or eight native Chris-
tians and one Christian woman, were accused of assaulting
certain Mohammedans and making a row in the bazaar.
It certainly involved the hearing of a number of witnesses
that would appal a stipendiary magistrate at home ; for
each of the eight defendants had separate witnesses of his
own to prove his innocence and absence from the scene
of the alleged occurrence. Finally I convicted all the de-
fendants, and sentenced them to a small fine each, with
the exception of the woman, who was young and exceed-
ingly pretty, and who I did not believe could have done
much in the row. The next day, while wearying through
the afternoon, the Chota Padre Sahib, or little clergy-
man, was announced, and the head of the German
Lutheran mission in Mozufferpore came in. He was a
really good old man, and much respected by all who knew
him.

" Oh, Mr. Gordon," he said, " I cannot talk about any
ordinary subjects ; I want to speak to you about having
fined my Christians. It is cruel, and they are all inno-

144 Life in the Mofussil.

cent ; and it is the other side that ought to have been
fined."

•' Mr. Blumenthal," I replied with some dignity, " I de-
cided the case to the best of my ability on the evidence
adduced. If you are dissatisfied, you can appeal to my
superior, the Magistrate of the district, Mr. Blake ; and if
he think fit, he can reverse my decision."

" Oh, I should not like to hurt your feelings by doing
that."

" Officials have no feelings on such matters," said I, sen-
tentiously, but not truly.

" But if you only knew all that I know," he said ; " these
men whom you have fined are subjected to persecution for
having turned Christians ; and those who were the plaintiffs
began the quarrel by calling my men ' eaters of pig ' and
' drunkards.' "

" Then you admit there was a quarrel. Why did your
Christians all assert that they were not there ? And why
did they all bring Christian witnesses to swear that they
were not ? "

This was rather a stumper for the Padre.

" Well," he said, " the others, the complainants, whom
you didn't fine, were quite as bad ; and the woman you let
off was the worst of all."

" My dear sir," I said, having now got the best of it,
" I decided the case on the evidence, and you have only
heard one side. The evidence, very likely, was a good
deal of it false. That of your Christians certainly was ;
and all you have said to-day only confirms me in my
opinion that I decided rightly. You cannot be so blind

Native Christians. 145

as to really think that a native convert is immaculate
because he is a Christian."

Here the poor old gentleman absolutely began to cry.
So I stopped, and he thanked me for letting him speak so
freely on the subject, and went away.

I don't think he really believed his Christians to be
innocent ; but he was doubtless much concerned at the
triumph of his Mohammedan adversaries.

I cannot say that I found conversion to Christianity im-
prove those converts with whom I happened to come in
contact. On the contrary, it appeared to me that they
became, both socially and morally, degraded by it ; but
then it must be admitted that all the converts I knew
belonged to the very lowest classes. As far as my expe-
rience goes, Christianity is certainly not making progress
in India, notwithstanding anything missionaries in Bengal
may say to the contrary. Indeed, I have little belief in
genuine conversions.

It may be better in Madras, though the Madras Chris-
tians that I have known have not borne a high character.
The usual run of missionaries are not of a very high order
of intellect, and by no means fit to argue with the subtle
Hindoo, who is scarcely convinced of the necessity of self-
denial, etc., etc., when he sees the preachers of the doctrine
so fond of comfortable bungalows and married life, and as
exacting with their servants and as careful of their rupees,
annas, and pice as the rest of the world. It requires men
like Xavicr to make an impression on the Oriental mind,
and missionaries of the present day do not resemble him.

My afternoons were also occasionally enlivened by the

VOL. I. I.

146 Life in the Mofussil.

visits of native officials and gentlemen of the neighbour-
hood, who thought it right and proper to call on the young
Hakim. These were a great nuisance, both to the visitor
and the visited.

If the visitor were an official, he would probably be a
native Judge; and after the usual questions about my
health, I would generally ask if he had a great deal to do,
and he always had; but, by dint of extremely hard work,
just managed to get through it.

If it were a native gentleman, I used to ask about his
crops, and if there was any difficulty about the rents ; and
as a general rule, the answer was, —

" In consequence of the prosperity of your Highness's
boots, the crops are good. (Huzoor ke juti ke ekbal se.)
There is a little want of rain ; but we hope that, by your
Highness's favour, the rains will soon set in."

To ask after wife or daughters would have been an
offence, and set down either to ignorance of the proper
way to behave, or to sheer rudeness. We in India are often
accused of a want of desire to amalgamate with the natives,
and cultivate their society. But how can we under these
circumstances ? How can you be on friendly terms with
a man who believes that your very touch defiles him, and
who would not eat his food if, in passing, your shadow had
happened to fall on it ?

The Maharajah of Durbhungah (who had died a short
time before), who was thrown into tolerably constant con-
tact with English officials, used, it was discovered, to change
his clothes immediately on his return home after an inter-
view with them, and not wear them again until they had

Native Social Qualifications. 147

been thoroughly purified, and also go through a personal
purification himself. His property was now under the
protection and control of the Court of Wards mentioned
above ; and the manager, who had much improved and
beautified the palace grounds at Durbhungah, and made
some ornamental gardens, used to send the widow Ranee
a choice nosegay every morning, until he found that she
never admitted it to her presence, for fear he should have
touched it, as he had done once or twice.

It is true that some few members of the Brahmo Soma]
— that is, the new Deist religion — have thrown off the
trammels of caste openly, and are glad to frequent Euro-
pean society ; but even these could in very few cases bring
the females of their family with them ; and many of them,
unfortunately, in consequence of the removal of caste
restraint, have become dissolute and drunken, and their /
society is not desirable. It is impossible at present that
there can be any intimate friendship between natives of
India and Europeans. Before this can be altered there
must be a complete change of habits on one side or the
other. What we think clean, they think dirty, and vice
versA. For instance, a well-bred Hindoo gentleman thinks
it dirty to eat with a knife and fork, or with any clothing
on but a waistcloth ; but I fancy it will be a very long time
before we come round to those views, and it will certainly
be equally long before they adopt ours. If newspaper
reporters could see what really went on in the domestic
privacy of the native potentates presented to the Prince of
Wales, after their interviews, I fear their accounts, if true,
would not have been quite so flattering and satisfactory, v

14S Life in the Mofussil.

To show how far this fear of defilement may be carried,
I may relate, that when Assistant Magistrate in charge of
Durbhungah, I was riding through an out-of-the-way village
one hot morning, and met a number of the headmen who
expected my coming. They were perfect rustics, but very
courteous. I asked them for some water, and some was
fetched in a perfectly new earthenware vessel and presented
to me on my bridle hand as I sat on horseback ; and they
begged me, when I had drunk as much as I wanted, to
throw the vessel with the contents remaining on the oppo-
site side of the animal, so that the vessel might not be
used again in the village, and no sprinkle of the water
come near them. All this was done without the faintest
suspicion that my feelings could be hurt by it, and I com-
plied as a matter of course.

From the above it can be easily understood that our
social intercourse in India is confined to Europeans only;
and as their number in small out-of-the-way stations in
Bengal is very limited, it is well to be at peace with all,
if possible.

One hot morning, just as I was coming out of my bath,
Percival sent me in a note that a chuprassie of Blake's had
just brought up. It was from Mrs. Blake : — " Dear Mr.
Percival, — Will you and Mr. Gordon give us the pleasure
of your company at dinner this evening, at eight o'clock ?"
On this he had written in pencil, "Must we go?" and
underneath it I replied, " I suppose we must," and told
the man to give it back to the Sahib. Percival, I knew,
very particularly wanted to stay at home that evening, as
his piano had arrived some half an hour previously from

A Social Contretemps. 149

Calcutta, and he wanted to devote his leisure to unpacking,
putting it up, and having a first performance on it ; so on
meeting him at breakfast I asked him,

"What did you say in answer to Mrs. Blake ?"

" Why, I sent the note in to you, and asked if you
thought we must go."

" And I sent it back to you, saying that I thought we
must."

" Good heavens ! the idiot must have taken it back to
Mrs. Blake. What shall we do ?"

It was rather trying ; but I was not in such a mess as
Percival, as the note had been addressed to him, and it
was for him to answer it, and he had asked the question,
" Must we go ?" He was an exceedingly punctilious man,
and was evidently in considerable consternation. At last
I suggested he should say that he hoped Mrs. Blake would
not be offended at an accident that had occurred through
the stupidity of a chuprassie ; that it always gave him
great pleasure to come to her house, though on this par-
ticular occasion he had special reasons for staying at home ;
however, that if she would receive us this evening, we
should both be delighted to come.

This answer was accordingly despatched, and we both
went to office ; and in about an hour I got a note from
Percival saying that Mrs. Blake had merely sent a " sa-
laam," which was equivalent to " no answer." This looked
ugly. In the evening I met Blake at the Racket Court ; and
he said, with a good-humoured twinkle in his eye, " I shall
have the pleasure of seeing you to-night." I saw that he
was all right, and on going home to dress I found that

150 Life in the MofussiL

Pcrcival had had a formal note from Mrs. Blake, saying
that she should be glad to see us at the hour named. It
was an awful ordeal, entering the drawing-room ; but Blake
was so genial, and evidently so delighted at the whole
thing, that we were soon at our ease. I found afterwards
that Mrs. Blake had sent our wretched pencilled remarks
to him at office, asking his advice, and he had told her
to treat the whole thing as a joke. She had scarcely felt
equal to this ; but his good humour and good sense had
pulled us through, and so a possible big disagreeable had
been reduced to a minimum.

About this time a small windfall came to me, though
from a melancholy cause. Poor Mrs. Macpherson fell
seriously ill, and was obliged to go to Calcutta, and her
husband found it necessary to accompany her. In addition
to his duties as Civil Surgeon, he held the office of District
Registrar, for which he was remunerated by fees paid on
the registration of each deed. In those days registration
was very loosely conducted, and no doubt a very large
number of false deeds were registered. There was nothing
to prevent false personation, except the identification by
two witnesses, who could be picked up for 6d. each ; and
unless other parties interested got information that it was
sought to register a deed, — and it was more than probable
they did not, — there would be no objections offered. All
this has since been altered. But, as it then was, the regis-
tration of a deed was positively of no value. Notwith-
standing this, the number of deeds registered in Tirhoot
was very large, and used to bring the Civil Surgeon a profit
of about £jo a month, after paying the salaries of three

District Registrar. 151

clerks. In his absence the Registrar was allowed to
appoint his own substitute, and Macpherson made it over
to me, offering half the proceeds as remuneration, which I
was only too glad to accept, and which I received for
about two months — a very welcome addition to my own
pay.

We were all very sorry for him when he came back
alone, and the return to his solitary house must have
been hard indeed.

CHAPTER VI.

A T MOZUFFERPORE.

THE NEW POLICE. — A RIVER TRIP. — EXAMINATION AT PATNA. —
SONEPORE FAIR.— SHOOTING PARTY IN THE NEPAUL TERAI. —
ILLEGAL ORDERS.

DURING that year the Bengal Government had determined
to put into practice the much-talked-of re-organization of
the police. An Act (V. of 1861) had been passed for the
purpose, and it had been decided that this should come
into force first of all in the Tirhoot District.

The Report of the Madras Commission, issued some time
previously, had shown that the police in that province had
not been properly controlled ; and that various malpractices,
including torture, had been carried on. It was thought,
truly enough, that the Bengal District Magistrate had
so much to do that he had not time to look after the
police ; and a good deal of stress was also laid on the
inexpediency of the thief-catcher being the thief-trier ; so
it was thought advisable that a special European officer
should be appointed to each district, called the District
Superintendent of Police, and that he should be provided
with special European subordinates to take charge of the
sub-divisions of districts. Further, the nomenclature of the
native police officials was to be changed. The old officers
in charge of the " thannahs," henceforward to be called

The New Police. 153

" police stations," were no longer " Thannardar " or
" Daroghah," but Inspector, or Sub-inspector. The sub-
ordinate stations were no longer "phanre," but "outpost ;"
and the old burkundaz became "constable." These new
names were pronounced by the natives " poleesh-istashun,"
" inshpektar," "outposht," and "cunnishshtubble." Uni-
forms also were ordained ; and European military caps
and jackets were decided upon for the officers, while a red
turban, blue blouse with belt, and staff, were substituted
for the rather nondescript get-up of the men, who were
also taught military drill and provided with muskets. The
Commissioners of Divisions, as far as their police powers
were concerned, were succeeded by Deputy Inspectors-
general ; and a sort of Police Minister was appointed under
the title of Inspector-general. In short, the police were to
become a separate service under separate officers, and
sufficiently drilled to be able to act in large bodies if
necessary.

The first result to us was a temporary addition to our
small society, in the shape of the new Inspector-general
(a civilian of some standing), a Deputy Inspector-general,
and three District Superintendents, who were to learn
their work. Two of these were military men anxious for
staff employ, and the third had been in the uncovenanted
civil service.

The new great man was a friend of Percival's, and put
up with us ; the others were distributed among the other
officials in the station. Our guest was an exceedingly
pleasant fellow, and of a character calculated to make the
new arrangements work smoothly if possible, for he at any

154 Life in tJic Mofussil.

rate kept Talleyrand's advice of "point de zelc" always
in view. This was not the case with all his subordinates,
especially the military men, who seemed continually to be on
the look-out for offence, and constantly exaggerating little
molehills of routine or etiquette into mountains of difficulty
and quarrel. Blake, however, was the man of all others to
steer clear of avoidable disagreeables, and his even temper
and clearheadedness enabled all the intricacies of taking
over charge to be got through without any open rupture.

It was naturally distasteful to the Magistrate of the dis-
trict to give up the direct control of the police. As a
matter of fact, it did not save him much routine work ; for,
as I have mentioned above, the reports, except those of
extra importance, were heard by the Joint Magistrate ;
while it deprived him to a considerable extent of the
appearance and of the reality of power. As long as the
police understood the Magistrate to be their immediate
head, they were anxious to please him in every way, and be
as subservient as possible ; but now they had another set
of officers to look to, and these began certainly by being
exceedingly jealous of the Magistrate, and encouraged their
subordinates to be independent and disobliging.

One feature in the new procedure was, that the Magis-
trate should give no orders direct to the subordinate police,
but through the District Superintendent only ; and one of
our new arrivals, the first appointed to be District Super-
intendent of Tirhoot, had instructed his subordinates to
carry this order out in the letter as well as the spirit. It
so happened that Blake was obliged to go out into the
interior of the district soon after he had made over charge

"A Rash Inshpektar." 155

of the police, and had sent his tents on, as usual, under the
care of his chuprassies. On arriving at his camp he found
nothing ready ; and his servants told him that the police of
the station had declined to give them any assistance in the
way of pitching the tents, or getting supplies of straw and
other necessaries. They said the Magistrate was no longer
their master, and he must look out for himself. Blake
went to the police-station and found the " inshpektar "
apparently a little frightened at his own temerity, but firm
in refusing assistance, as he had received no orders from
the District Superintendent. " Very well," said Blake, with
the most perfect good temper, " let me look at your station
registers." This also the man declined to do on the same
grounds. Now in this he was utterly wrong, though he did
not know it. The Magistrate was still the chief officer in
the district, and responsible for its tranquillity and proper
administration ; and it was of course absurd that he should
be denied access to the information contained in the police
registers.

This supplied Blake with a capital peg on which to hang
a report to the Commissioner, which was forwarded to the
Government ; and the result was a wigging to the District
Superintendent, and the dismissal of the " inshpektar,"
who had gone beyond the letter, though not the spirit, of
the orders of his superior.

It was now laid down that the Magistrate of the district, —
e.g., the official corresponding to Blake, — could give orders
direct to the police which did not affect the internal
economy of the " force," as it was now called ; and also,
that the Deputy Superintendent of police should carry out

156 Life in the Mofussil.

all orders of the Magistrate, recording his non-concurrence
by way of protest, if he saw reason to do so, and reporting
to his superior officer, the Deputy Inspector-general, who
would confer with the Commissioner, and then, if necessary,
lay the matter before the Government. Under the cir-
cumstances, if a Magistrate did give a wrong order, it
would be a longish time before it was rectified ; but it was
far better to trust an official of his position with absolute
authority for the time, than to allow storms to arise in each
district tea-cup.

It was only to be expected that the Commissioners, as
well as Magistrates, should object to the change, for they
too were still held responsible for the peaceful admi-
nistration of their provinces, and yet found the Deputy
Inspector-general interposed as buffers between them and
the police, just as the Magistrates found the District Super-
intendents. As years have gone on, the new system has
been much modified ; but at first, there can be no doubt
that the thing did not work well. A mass of appointments
were suddenly created, and, as a necessary consequence, a
still more numerous mass of candidates appeared, a very
large number of them being military men, whose sole
qualification for the posts they sought was a desire to enter
staff employ, and get better pay than they did with their
regiments. They were useful in drilling the new police,
practically the least important part of their work ; but, as a
rule, utterly without experience in the management of a
body of men, not to be employed in fighting battles, but in
the prevention and detection of crime in a peaceful country.
Many of them knew little or nothing of the language, and

" Galiy 157

were altogether in the hands of their chief native sub-
ordinates. They could, however, be credited with a sense
of duty, and a desire to do their best ; interfered with only
by a strong feeling of what was due to their dignity, and a
constant suspicion that their rights were being encroached
upon.

The most useful class were those who had been Deputy
Magistrates in the uncovenanted civil service, and who had
been tempted by the hope of promotion and better salary
and status to exchange into the police. These understood
the supervision of local police and the conduct of cases,
and did practically well, though terribly pitched into by
military Deputy Inspectors-general for not being up in
their drill.

Another class were the friends and proteges of people in
influential positions, and who of course were useless at
starting, though many of them turned out well enough
after gaining a little experience. Another difficulty was,
that a large number of the old "daroghahs" objected to
the new uniform, as entailing loss of caste, and still more
to serving under military superiors, who were generally
supposed to be quick-tempered and imperious, and to be
devoid of the consideration for native manners and customs
shown by the civilians.

Abuse (in Hindustani, "gali") is looked upon with great
dread in India by native gentlemen. Instead of consider-
ing that it denies the man from whom it proceeds, they
think that the person against whom it is levelled is irre-
parably injured by it, and shrink from it more than they
would from a blow. The stain of dishonour caused by the

158 Life in the Mofussil.

receipt of an abusive epithet cannot be effaced. I recollect
some time after this a native gentleman calling on me, and
telling me that he thought he ought to pay a visit of cere-
mony to a young Assistant Superintendent of Police who
had recently arrived at the station ; " But," he said, " I am
afraid. He is young and hasty, and how do I know but
that some word may come out of his mouth which will
disgrace me, without his meaning anything." Admitting
that the offensive word might not be intended, perhaps,
even not understood, by the person uttering it, the effect
on the person addressed would be the same. This being
the case, many of the experienced old native police officers
threw up their posts, and a great number of the burkun-
dazes, who would not put up with the drill. Their places
were filled by numbers of recruits from the more war-
like populations of the West and North-West, who knew
nothing of the people or the localities in which they had
to act, and could with difficulty be made to understand
how to serve a summons. They were, also, generally of
better physique and greater animal courage than the Ben-
galees, and bullied the people proportionately, who hated
them in return with a bitter hatred.

In due time, the watchful supervision of Government
detected this, and orders were issued on the subject of
recruiting, with a view to check the evil. As may easily
be imagined, the new police, though more expensive
than the old, were at first not very efficient ; but as things
settled down, and the new officers got to understand their
work, and it was more and more definitely settled that
the District Superintendents were the assistants to and

One Partridge for Nineteen Elephants. 159

subordinates of the District Magistrates, the new system
began to work much better, and doubtless the subordinate
native police were more efficiently controlled.

All these disagreeables and difficulties were pretty well
got over before I attained the post of District Magistrate ;
but, in the meantime, great changes were made. The
Deputy Inspectors-general were abolished as useless, and
the services of many of the Assistant Superintendents of
Police, so hastily appointed, had been dispensed with.
About this time there had been a desire in Bengal to
diminish the power and importance of the District Magis-
trate, and cut him up, as it were, into a number of smaller
functionaries ; but this was soon found to be a mistake, and
recently the " tendency " has been all the other way.
However, I shall have to speak on this matter at greater
length further on.

During the settlement of the new arrangements in
Tirhoot, it was of course necessary for the Inspector-
general to move about a good deal, and this he and
his satellites did con amore, the more especially as there
was plenty of small game to be had, and it was still pos-
sible to shoot mornings and evenings. On one occasion
he was going to inspect a station called Rowsara, whence
also " khabar " (news) of innumerable black partridges had
been received. I ventured to bet him I gold mohur (32s.)
that he and his party would not bag twenty brace in the
day they could devote to the sport. After some haggling,
he backed the guns for thirteen brace only. On his return,
I asked him the result ; for I had heard that all the forces
of the neighbourhood had been put into requisition, and

160 Life in the Mofussil.

the resident gentry and police had vied with each other
in providing means to " sweep the jungle " as the natives
call it ; and 200 coolies (chiefly village chowkeydars) and
nineteen elephants had been employed to beat the grasses
in which these birds were to be found.

" We shot all we saw/' he said, in reply to my ques-
tions ; and after some time I elicited the fact that they
had only seen one partridge — rather a disproportionate re-
turn for all the force employed. These black partridges are
migratory birds, in the sense that they move in bodies from
one heavy grass to another ; and as these patches are very
numerous, it is rather difficult to know where to find them.

But a still more annoying fact was the occurrence of a
" dacoity " within a mile of his camp, for they had been in
tents for one night. A " dacoity " is a robbery with vio-
lence by an organized gang, — according to the Penal Code
the number must exceed five, — and is the most serious and
troublesome class of crime that the police have to deal
with. In this case the house of an opulent villager had
been attacked by a band of twenty-five or thirty men ; two
of the servants and one of the sons had been severely
wounded with spears ; and about 1,000 rs. worth in money
and jewels carried off. There were plenty of police
promptly on the spot soon after news was received of the
occurrence, and a deal of energy displayed, but apparently
not much discretion, for though a number of bad characters
in the neighbourhood were arrested, and an enormous
number of witnesses procured to give evidence against
them, they were all finally acquitted by Percival when
committed to his Court for trial.

An Inconvenient Dacoity. 161

This was naturally a subject for cynical remarks, not only
by the magisterial authorities, but the subordinate native
officials ; but it proved nothing either way, for plenty of
dacoities had been previously committed in which no clue
to the perpetrators had been discovered. It was very
perverse of these particular dacoits, however, to choose this
time and place for their exploits. Of course, the police
officials said the Judge was all wrong, and they had caught
the right men. Perhaps they had. I don't know. Per-
sonally, I had no feeling against the new police, for they
did not interfere with any exercise of power by me, and
I looked upon the new comers as so many more racket-
players and additional members of our small society. In
due time, however, the Inspector-general Avent off to
arrange another district, and we were left with the new
District Superintendent and his Assistant, to the dulness
of the rainy season, which began this year punctually
on the 15th of June, the date given, in geography books
about India, for its commencement.

The weary sodden months of July and August passed
slowly away, and in September we began to cheer our-
selves with the prospect of the approach of the cold weather,
though it was still two months off. On the 18th of this
month began the worship of the Goddess Doorga, commonly
called the Doorga Poojah, which lasts for a fortnight, and
answers in Bengal somewhat to our Christmas holidays
in England. The festival had not quite such a hold of
the people in Behar as in Bengal proper; but nevertheless
the Courts, criminal as well as the others, were closed for
ten days, the troublesome pettifogging attorneys ceased to

VOL. 1. M

1 62 Life in the Mofussil.

seek for clients, and even " dacoits " refrained from their
nefarious pursuits during this sacred interval.

Melville determined to make a rush down to Calcutta
to see his sister there, the wife of one of the Govern-
ment Secretaries, and asked me if I would like to go
with him. I was only too glad of the chance of a
change, and Blake gave us both leave to go on our
own responsibility ; that is, he undertook to look after
the district and do for Melville anything that might
be necessary during his absence, while we should have
to take upon ourselves the consequences of the Govern-
ment finding fault with us for absenting ourselves from
our districts without regular leave.

We hoped to reach Calcutta in three days, as the railway
had now been opened as far as Monghyr, which lay on
the other bank of the Ganges, a little lower down than
the south-easternmost corner of the Tirhoot district. We
were to drive to an indigo factory situated on the river
bank, and then take boat, which we expected would
carry us to Monghyr, as it was down stream, easily in
the course of one night.

We left Mozufferpore on a Sunday morning, and arrived
at the hospitable planter's house in time for a midday
meal. He had been written to beforehand, and provided
a country boat, and sent some food on board. Unfortu-
nately, he had not himself inspected the boat, and on
coming down to the ghat to see us off, expressed some
misgiving as to its fitness. It was a very clumsy affair,
veiy wide in proportion to its length, and covered with
thatch, the covering coming so far forward as to leave

A River Trip. 16

j

very little room in the bows for rowing purposes. In fact,
there was scarcely space for four rowers, and our host had
stipulated for six. But the weather was calm and the
stream was strong ; so we still thought to reach Monghyr
very early in the morning, about 4 a.m. We said good-bye
to him in good spirits, and for the first two or three
hours seemed to make fair progress.

We determined to dine early, and go to sleep as soon as
possible, as we had no candles with us, and it would be
rather dreary work sitting in the dark, or with the light
only of the stinking oil lamp that could be procured from
the boatmen. Our provisions consisted of a very small
leg of lamb, a small loaf of bread, about half a tin of sweet
biscuits, and a bottle of claret. This was considered
ample to last us till 4 a.m. the next morning, so we ate
carelessly, not thinking we should care to see any of the
remnants of the food again. But towards the small hours I
was awoke by the boat rolling in a very uncomfortable
way, and putting my head out in front of the thatch, I found
that the men had ceased rowing, and that we were wallow-
ing in the trough of a pretty considerable swell, caused by
a strong south-easterly wind. I woke Melville, and with
a little British energy we set the rowers to work again.
But it was soon clear that it was impossible to keep the
head of the clumsy vessel to the wind, and that, as far as
onward progress was concerned, we were utterly helpless.
The wind increased in strength every minute, and very
soon rain began to pour down with tropical fury. As day-
light broke, we saw the right-hand bank, towards which
the wind was driving us, about a mile off; and we hoped

164 Life in the Mofussil.

to reach this, and take shelter until the wind should drop,
or, if that seemed unlikely, retrace our steps. But while
considering what was best to be done, we felt a violent
bump, the boat heeled over on one side, and then remained
stationary.

We had stuck on a sand bank, covered with only about
half a foot of water. Oars and poles were at once put in
requisition to shove us off; but the wind drove us on, and
though Melville and I worked as hard as the rest, all our
efforts were of no use, and we became convinced that we
must stick where we were until the wind should moderate.
My solar topee (pith hat) was whirled away during the
struggle, but that was the only result. As the day passed
on, about 6 a.m., I began to feel hungry, and would have
given a good deal for a hot cup of coffee and a piece of
toast. We looked at our leg of lamb, or rather the small
remnant. There was no bread left, and we each had a
bit of meat and a sweet biscuit, not a nice mixture, our
drink being drawn from the holy Ganges, which trouble-
some river we both cursed from the bottom of our hearts.
The day wore wearily on, still the same leaden sky, the
same torrents of rain, and the same unceasing plash of the
waves driven by the wind against our half-heeled-over
boat. The thatch, too, was leaking ; and Melville and I
sat close together on a space about a yard square, which
seemed drier than the rest. There was no danger, and
consequently no excitement to keep up our spirits. The
roof of the boat was not high enough to allow us to stand
upright ; we had nothing to read, so all we could do was
to squat, and endeavour to talk. In this respect the boat-

Stranded in the Ganges. 165

men were better off than we ; for natives have any amount
of sleep at command, and they lay huddled up like so
many bundles of rags, apparently heedless of everything,
but probably happy because able to be lazy.

About midday we felt hungry, and again turned our
attention to the remnant of our leg of lamb. To our dis-
may it had turned green. The damp and muggy heat
combined had caused this. With many misgivings we
committed it to the stream, to be digested by some river
turtle or alligator, and satiated our present pangs with a
few sweet biscuits each. Evening came on, but with no
change, and we were content to dine off a handful of dry
rice, given us by the boatmen ; for the wind and rain was
such that they could not even attempt to light a fire in
our exposed situation. They had, moreover, very little
rice with them, as they expected to buy some cheap in
the Monghyr bazaar. As the darkness settled down, we
tried to compose ourselves miserably to sleep, and par-
tially succeeded, so that the night was less dreary than
the day. But the morning dawned dismally, without break
in the sky or cessation of the wind and the rain. Added
to this, our food supply had nearly collapsed, and we
were reduced to two sweet biscuits each.

About ten, a steamer passed us, a long way off; but
without taking any notice of our signal of distress, viz.,
a pair of trousers, belonging to Melville, hauled up the
mast. We used these in order to show the steamer people
that Europeans were on our country boat. We anathema-
tized this vessel pretty well ; but two hours afterwards,
another passed us with the same result, and then our

166 Life in I In- Mofussil.

indignation knew no bounds. I mentally composed a tre-
mendous letter to the Englishman newspaper on the in-
human conduct of river steamer captains, which, as may be
supposed, was never committed to writing. Probably we
were not seen, and if we were, I doubt if they could have
helped us without considerable risk ; for it seemed we had
got on a long strip of shallow, to which they were obliged
to give a wide berth, and down the side of this a tremen-
dous current was running ; and had they stopped near,
they would probably have been stranded like ourselves.
For all this we were not prepared to make allowances at
the time ; and to add to our discomfort, the bottom of the
boat being now pretty well waterlogged, the rats began to
make their appearance in our neighbourhood, and to climb
about the thatch roof. We consoled ourselves with the
reflection that they would not find much to eat, " Unless it
should be our own unhappy persons," I added, with a
forced smile ; but Melville suggested that it might be the
other way, and we should eat them.

But even this gale must have an end, and looking out
hopelessly about 5 p.m., I thought I detected a light
appearance in the sky to windward ; and surely enough,
half-an-hour afterwards, a gleam of sun shot through the
clouds, and the wind had decidedly moderated, and the
rain ceased. We also found, considerably to our surprise,
that the river had fallen so much as to leave a small dry
bit of sand on one side of our boat, and it was a relief to
get out and stand on this. Presently we saw shoot out
from the bank, some three-quarters of a mile distant, a
very tiny dinghy, and, as it approached, we saw it was

A Tame Buffalo. 167

navigated by an old greyheaded creature, who seemed afraid
to come near us when he found we were Europeans. How-
ever we got the boatmen to speak soothingly to him ;
Melville, too, addressed him as his father and brother, and
by every other endearing term he could think of, and I
made rupees glisten by holding them in the sun, which was
now shining.

At length he was persuaded to come alongside ; and, with
much caution and difficulty, Melville and I got into his
frail craft, for the wind was still very strong, and reached
the bank. The appearance of this was not very encou-
raging, for it looked a mass of black streaming mud,
about eight or ten feet high. We divested ourselves of
our boots and socks, and even our trousers, and tying
them in bundles on our backs, plunged on to, or rather
into, this, and reached the top, black above our knees and
our elbows. There we found a herd of tame buffaloes,
enjoying the slimy nature of things in general, guarded by
a small herd-boy, who was riding on the back of one of
the huge ugly brutes, some hundred yards off. It is a
curious fact that these creatures are so amenable to their
keepers, who are generally small children, and so irate at
the sight of a white man ; and this was most disagreeably
illustrated by one of them making a rush at me. I turned
to fly, but my naked feet prevented my making any pro-
gress in the mud ; and so I held up both my arms, stood
firm, and shrieked. This stopped the animal long enough
to give the small boy time to drive him off, which he did
quite easily, and then ran away in as great fear as if he
had seen two evil spirits.

i6S Life in the Mofussil.

However, the village was only a couple of hundred
yards off, and going towards it we found a pool where
we washed our arms and legs, and made ourselves look a
little more respectable, and then went on to where a small
group had assembled to stare at us, and of whom Melville
demanded in as authoritative a tone as possible where the
"jeyt ryot," or headman, was to be found. This indi-
vidual was soon forthcoming, and we then inquired where
the nearest police station was ; and this to our sorrow we
heard was eight miles away. We also found that we were
in the district of Monghyr.

" Then," said Melville, " send a messenger to the than-
nah, say that two Hakims from Tirhoot have been
wrecked here and want two palanquins as soon as
possible to go to Barh, which we found was some thirty
miles off, and tell the police to send information to the
magistrate of Monghyr and the magistrate of Tirhoot."

This was done to make the villagers believe that we
were bond fide Hakims, and not European loafers only ;
and it had the effect of rendering them willing to oblige
us. The "patwarree," or village accountant, placed a room,
that is, a mud floor covered with a thatch and surrounded
by mud walls, at our disposal ; and here we prepared to
pass the night, for it was now dark, and there was no
chance of our getting the palanquins before the following
morning. The village was inhabited by Hindoos, and so
no animal food, eggs or fowls, could be procured ; but some
rice and vegetable curry was prepared for us, and presented
to us on plantain leaves. This we ate with our fingers.
We were starving ; and yet plunging my fingers into the

The Patwarree s Hut. 169

greasy mess had such a nauseating effect on me that I
could scarcely swallow any of it. Melville was of stronger
stomach, and ate all that I left as well as his own share.
We then lay down to pass another miserable night on a
" takhtaposh/' a sort of low table on which the patwarree
used to squat in the day-time with his papers round him,
and in which I found the nail heads even harder than
the boards. Sleep was not possible, and it was an inex-
pressible relief when day began to make its appearance.

The wind had by this time quite gone down, and the
boatmen had managed to bring our baggage on shore.
Soon the two palanquins appeared, accompanied by a
policeman ; and after taking a draught of milk, and sign-
ing two certificates, one for the "jeyt ryot" and one for
the " patwarree," both written out by the latter, that they
had given us all necessary assistance, we started for the
nearest European habitation. These certificates would be
carefully preserved by these two men, and brought forward
as evidence of their being good characters in case of their
getting into trouble by any chance afterwards.

We had happened to come upon a low-lying tract of
country, suited only for the cultivation of the heavy rice
crop, so that there were no planters' bungalows in the
neighbourhood. Had there been, we should have been
better off. As it was, we were anxious to see who was the
inhabitant of the nearest European habitation, for the
natives could only tell us he was a "railway sahib."

In about two hours we approached the bungalow, and
saw the sahib sitting in the verandah. My heart fell at
the sight of him, for it was clear he was one of the lower

i yo Lift in the MofussiL

class of employes, and I longed for something civilized
both to talk to and to cat. He turned out to be a sort
of overseer, and was for his position a decent enough fel-
low ; but his means of hospitality were not great. However
he did his best, and supplied us with some fried slices of
village pig (a food we would not have looked at on any
ordinary occasion), and some gin and water. Being all
but starved, we found these good ; and when discussed, our
host, who had a trolly at his disposal, said he would give
us a lift to Mokameh, where his superior the engineer lived,
and whom I had met on my journey up, some nine months
previously. The rails had been laid as far as Barh in that
interval, though the line was not open for traffic. He was
a mild-looking man ; but his conversation on the trolly
was most truculent. According to his own account, he
had killed several game-keepers in England before coming
out to India, and committed other exploits of a similar
character. We nevertheless parted on good terms about
3 p.m., and were delighted to find ourselves hospitably
received once more in a properly furnished bungalow, with
a chance of getting something fit to eat.

Our new host was much interested and amused with the
recital of our adventures, at which we could now afford to
laugh, and promised to send us on by trolly to Barh the
next day, after we were refreshed with a proper dinner
and a good night's rest. The next day we reached Barh,
in the Patna district ; and I found that my former host
had taken advantage of the Doorga holidays to go into
head-quarters, to consult Alison the Magistrate ; but at
the dak bungalow we found the new Assistant Superin-

A Truculent Plate-layer. 171

tendent of Police, who had only recently been appointed
here. He proved to be an old acquaintance of Melville's
and with his assistance we soon procured a decent-
looking boat to cross us once more to the Tirhoot side
of the river. With some misgivings I trusted myself again
to the treacherous stream ; but this time nothing adverse
happened, and about sunset we cast anchor close to the
hospitable bungalow of the Begum Serai factory. Here
again our adventures were the source of considerable
amusement, and a running coolie was sent into the station
with a letter for Mrs. Melville, to allay any anxiety that
she might feel, and also to prepare relays of horses on
the road, for we had sixty-five miles to drive, and conse-
quently thirteen horses were necessary.

The following evening saw us safe once more in Mozuf-
ferpore ; where our movements had been the subject of
much speculation, for Melville's brother-in-law had been
telegraphing in all directions to know what had become of
him ; and Mrs. Melville had in consequence been seriously
alarmed. The only practical result was, that we both got
a wigging from Coldham the Commissioner, for absenting
ourselves from our district without leave.

In due time the police report was forwarded from
Monghyr to Blake, for information, stating that two
Europeans calling themselves Tirhoot Hakims had come
on shore at Barheeia (the name of the village), and that
they, the police, had furnished them with palanquins and
everything necessary to go on to Barh. For some time
after this we were a good deal pestered with inquiries as
to how we had enjoyed Calcutta.

i7- Life in the Mofussil.

I think the adventure is worth relating, as showing to
what straits Europeans may be reduced in a highly culti-
vated and civilized part of Bengal, if thrown entirely upon
native resources.

My next journey took place a month later, when I had
again to cross the Ganges to get to Patna for my ex-
amination. The river had begun to subside ; but yet it was
very different in appearance to the series of streams and
sandbanks I had traversed in the previous cold weather ;
and by making a tour of the large island, which was now
only just above water, a boat could go across at one
stretch. There was a favourable breeze blowing, and I
quite enjoyed the sail. There was a pleasant party at
Alison's hospitable table that evening, for several young
civilians had come in from the neighbouring districts, and
my starvation trip was a source of considerable merriment.

In these days the examination for the whole province
under Coldham's jurisdiction was conducted by the Local
Committee at Bankipore, consisting of Coldham, Lawson,
Alison, and a native Deputy Magistrate. The papers,
however, were issued by a Central Committee in Calcutta.
There were four papers in all, one containing twelve ques-
tions on Revenue Law, Rent Law, and all work done on
the Collectorate side ; another containing a similar number
on Criminal Law and all work done on the Magistrate's
side of the office ; a piece of prose to be translated into
very grammatical Hindustani ; and a second piece to be
dictated into Hindustani, to be written down by a native
clerk. We also had to hear the record of a case read out,
and write a decision upon it, and converse with two classes

First Standard Examination. 173

of natives — an educated man and a rustic, and read off
some ordinary documents written in shikust, or the run-
ning hand in the vernacular.

The Revenue was much the tougher of the two law
papers, as it embraced a great variety of subjects — among
others, the regulations for the Permanent Settlement of
Lord Cornwallis ; the law of resumptions by Government
of illegal grants ; the law for the collection of the revenue ;
the Excise, Opium, and Salt laws ; the Stamp Acts ; the
law of Batwarra, or division of estates ; the law of the ac-
quisition of land for public purposes ; and the great Rent
Law Act of 1859, which had only recently come into
working ; and, though mentioned last, by no means least,
the Rules of Practice based upon these laws and framed
by the Board of Revenue.

The Criminal Paper embraced the new Penal and Cri-
minal Procedure Codes, the new Police Code, the Cattle
Trespass Act, the Ferry Laws, the Municipal Act, Rail-
way Act, and the Law of Evidence, then Act II. of 18^5.
The first two of these Codes I think I knew pretty nearly
by heart, as this was the only sure way of being able to
answer the questions in this paper, the very words of the
Act being required by the Examiners. E.g., " When is a
person said to use force to another ? " In answer to such
a question it was necessary to give the definition in the
Penal Code word for word, and a precious long one it is.
I insert it here as a specimen.

" Sec. 349. — A person is said to use force to another if
he causes motion, change of motion, or cessation of motion
to that other, or if he causes to any substance such motion,

1 74 Life in tJie Mofussil.

change of motion, or cessation of motion as brings that
substance into contact with any part of that other's body,
or with anything which that other is wearing or carrying,
or with anything so situated that such contact affects that
other's sense of feeling ; provided that the person causing
the motion, or change of motion, or cessation of motion
causes that motion, change of motion, or cessation of mo-
tion in one of the three ways hereinafter described :

" First. By his own bodily power.

"Secondly. By disposing any substance in such a manner
that the motion, or change or cessation of motion, takes
place without any further act on his part, or on the part of
any other person.

" Thirdly. By inducing any animal to move, to change
its motion, or cease to move."

We examinees used to chafe a good deal at these ques-
tions, saying, "What is the use of asking them, when we
always have the books at our side for reference in actual
practice ? " But no doubt the fact of having to learn our
laws like this was of great use in making us familiar with
them, and enabled us to know where to look when we had
the books beside us. The questions, possibly, were not al-
ways very intelligently set ; but the mere reading for the
examination, though distasteful, was beneficial.

In the Vernacular Examination the insistance on gram-
matical accuracy was carried to an almost absurd pitch.
There is a wretched particle "ne" in Hindustani, which
spoils all fluency and neatness in long sentences, if used
in accordance with the exigences of grammar, and which
is disregarded freely by native clerks in writing orders and

A Method of Giving Marks. I 75

reports, but neglect of which brought many a glibly talk-
ing and writing examinee to grief in the translation paper.
The paragraph set for dictation consisted generally of
long and involved English sentences, and seemed to me as
a rule more difficult than that given for translation ; but
as what emanated from the mouth of the young " Hakim "
was taken down by a subservient native clerk only too
anxious to make the result as good as possible, in many
cases this was not so trying a test as it was intended to be.
It was amusing to watch how civil all we examinees were
to this underling ; and it was very important that those
who dictated towards the end of the list should be so, for
by that time he had got an inkling of what the English
really meant, and could be of powerful assistance.

The examinations are now conducted in a much stricter
way ; and the Local Committees give marks only in the
subject of conversation, all the papers being looked over
by the Central Committee, in Calcutta ; but at this time
everything was done in a very friendly way. Lawson
superintended my conversation with the Deputy Magis-
trate who represented the educated gentleman in my case.
He had, as I knew, a small boat ; and I directed the con-
versation to this, and asked him if he would lend it to
Lawson, or if he were afraid, Lawson being stout, to say
the least of it. Lawson here interposed very good
humouredly, said I conversed very well, and gave me full
marks.

Two days after both law papers were finished, I went
over to see Lawson in the early morning, and found him
engaged in what he called looking over them. Full marks

i 76 Life in the MofussiL

for cacli paper were 160 ; and to pass, it was necessary to
get 100. Lawson's plan was, to see who had got 97, or
thereabouts, and give them an additional four or five
marks each, so as to bring them over the 100. Alison
and the Deputy Magistrate had already marked the papers
carefully and conscientiously no doubt, and it remained
for Coldham and Lawson to do the same, when an
average would be struck by adding the marks given by all
the examiners together, and dividing by four. Lawson's
theory was, that it was a waste of labour to make four men
look over one paper ; and that if a man got 97 marks he
must know enough about it to make him fit to pass, and
therefore, as far as he was concerned, he passed him. It so
happened that I had plenty of marks in both papers, so
that I did not want any assistance ; but it occurred to me
that it would be rather hard for other examinees, if mem-
bers of other Local Committees did not happen to hold
the same views.

The reading documents in the vernacular was also easily
got over in these days ; but now is the greatest stumbling
block to examinees, for instead of having to stammer
through two or three lines, as I had, they have to write
out the whole thing in the Roman character. The shikust
Hindustani writing is exceedingly difficult to learn to read,
and it requires long and constant practice to do it fluently.
On the whole, my few days of examination were very plea-
sant, and I felt pretty confident that I had passed ; for
though all the proceedings of the Locals had to be con-
firmed by the Centrals in Calcutta, yet this was a mere
matter of form, and it was only a question of waiting until

Regret for Lost Time. 177

they should choose to hold a meeting and order the names
of those who had passed to be inserted in the Calcutta
Gazette.

Ravvlinson had passed the First, or Lower Standard at
the previous examination, and was now in for the Second,
or Higher Standard, in which the papers set were on the
same subjects, but supposed to be more difficult, and in
which an examination in Bengali was included. He was
now empowered to try a larger range of cases, and could
inflict a fine of 200 rs., or .£20, and sentence to a term of six
months' imprisonment ; and he could also adjudicate cases
under the rent law. In fact, I felt he was ahead of me ;
and as he was also now drawing 50 rs. a month, or £60
a year, more than I was, I was sensible already of the
importance of the time I had lost in coming round the
Cape, instead of by the overland route ; and in dawdling
in Calcutta.

Further too, his suit with Miss Coldham appeared to be
prospering, and he seemed in a fair way to a very success-
ful start.

I felt rather sad on my return journey to the trial of my
everlasting assault cases, and looked eagerly forward to the
report of the Central Committee ; but they were lazy, and
no mention was made of us in the Gazette until January.
I was afterwards told that one of the senior members of
the Central Committee could not be got to attend the
meeting, hence the delay, which was altogether uncalled
for and most annoying to all of us examinees.

However, in the meantime the cold weather came on ;
there were no more dreary hot afternoons to lounge hope-
VOL. I. w

i ;S Life in the Mofussil.

lessly through ; and on the 16th of November commenced
the great Soneporc fair, with which is combined the pleas-
antest race meeting in the world. This has been described
in detail by the able author of " Letters from a Competi-
tion Wallah "; but this year was the last occasion in which
it may be said really to have been sacred to the enjoy-
ment of the European inhabitants of the surrounding dis-
tricts, for in succeeding years the railway was open, and
the European society was quadrupled.

I will shortly state that we Europeans took up our
quarters in a large grove of trees bordering on an open
plain, in which lay the race-course. The whole grove
was filled with tents, one wide way being kept clear as a
sort of street through the whole. Blake had asked Per-
cival and myself to join his camp, as he had plenty
of tents at his disposal ; and this was a very agree-
able arrangement for us. Sonepore itself lies at the point
of confluence of the river Gunduk with the Ganges. The
Gunduk separates Tirhoot from the neighbouring district
of Chuprah, so that we Tirhoot officials had only this
stream, — a broad and rapid one it is true, — between our-
selves and our own jurisdiction. The route to it was down
the Hajeepore road, by Gooriah Ghat, the place where I
had slept on my first journey up to Mozufferpore. Gooriah
now presented a very different scene to that occasion, as
all the accommodation was taken up, and innumerable
vehicles quite filled up the road in front of the bungalow.
Blake spent a night there enfamille, but most of us merely
stopped to change horses.

Percival and I left Mozufferpore before daylight, and

Soncpore. 1 79

reached Gooriah just in time to find Blake installing his
family in their barouche. They seemed rather crowded
and somewhat fretful, and I felt glad that I was un-
attached, at any rate for this occasion ; and I think Percival
for the moment did not regret that his family were some
7,000 or 8,000 miles away. We offered Blake a seat in our
dog-cart, which he accepted with some alacrity, telling his
wife that he would go on ahead with us and see that the
boat was ready at the crossing. This, probably, was not
his sole reason ; but yet it was really a good one, for the
resources of the ferry were completely overtaxed on this
occasion ; and without a certain display of authority and
European energy, hours might elapse before a crossing
could be effected.

The ghat presented a scene of indescribable confusion.
Elephants were being urged into the water, having been
first divested of their loads, in order that they might swim
across under the guidance of their mahouts. When an
elephant swims, he keeps a very small piece of his back
above water, or else sufficiently near the surface to enable
the mahout to stand upon it and direct his movements.
They are very nervous animals, and easily lose their heads.
The day previously one had got frightened, refused to
obey its mahout, and swam about without approaching
either bank, until it sank and was drowned. Its body had
been washed on to a shallow ; and we could now see it,
with numerous vultures and other birds of prey hovering
in the neighbourhood, waiting until the tough hide should
be sufficiently decomposed to become penetrable by their
beaks.

i So Life in the Mofussil.

There were horses, cattle, and sheep in numbers, buggies
and native carts, and native goods, and European bag-
gage, tents, and tent furniture, waiting in quantities which
it seemed impossible should ever get across. However, on
Blake's appearance, a boat which had just returned from
the opposite shore was kept clear for him and for us ; and
by the time we had got our dog-cart on board, the
barouche with the rest of his party appeared. Under the
Hakim's eye the ferrymen worked hard; and we were soon
on our way to the other side, whereas an unfortunate native
passenger with any baggage would probably have had to
wait for hours. As we drove up the street of canvas dwell-
ings on the other side, from every tent already occupied
friendly faces looked out and friendly voices shouted a
welcome. Our servants had gone on the previous day
with our baggage, so that we found all comforts ready.

Sonepore fair, of course, originates in a religious cere-
mony, which consists in bathing at the point of confluence
of the Gunduk with the Ganges, at the very moment that
the November moon is at the full. Such bathing washes
away all previous sins ; but it must be done at the exact
moment, and to this end crowds assemble and await the
signal given by a Brahmin, who sits on a small sand
hillock overlooking the spot. He is supposed to give the
signal a few seconds before, in order to give as many
bathers as possible time to get into the water ; and the
crowd at the moment he gives it is a very extraordinary
sight. People of both sexes, of all ages and ranks (Hin-
dus, of course), make a simultaneous rush to the water.
Many accidents take place, and occasionally some are

The Washing Away of Sins. 181

drowned ; but to be drowned on such an occasion is about
equal to being crushed under the wheel of Juggernath's
car, and the fate of any one so dying cannot be considered
a cause of sorrow.

The Brahmins, on the one hand, like a death or two, as
it adds to the fame and sanctity of the ceremony ; but on
the other, they are afraid that too many would lead to
disagreeable restrictions on the part of the officials of the
unsympathetic British Government, who, as it is, place
policemen here to keep order and prevent all accidents, as
far as may be possible. There are too, I am sorry to say,
many impious thieves, who take advantage of the frenzied
fervour of those who are anxious to wash away their sins,
to ply their calling very successfully.

We Europeans further inland, in our pleasant canvas
town under the shade of the grove, took little notice of
these things, but devoted ourselves to Anglo-Saxon
pleasures with very remarkable energy. The amusements
were of a nature similar to those described at the
Mozufferpore race meeting ; but as nobody's tent was very
far from anybody else's, and as everybody had brought a
large amount of good cheer which he wished to share with
his friends, the amount of eating and drinking was very
great. I never saw so much hospitality pressed into ten
days.

One additional thing to do, was a visit to the elephant
and horse fairs, the latter being accompanied with some
risk, as every other animal seemed to be as dangerous as
a man-eating tiger. They were mostly blindfolded, and
their fore and hind feet securely tied ; but not unfrequcntly

[82 Life in the Mofussil.

they managed to break loose, and then the fighting and
kicking and biting became a serious matter.

The ball-room was in the race stand, a masonry build-
ing of some pretensions; and as it possessed a good
polished wood floor, and this season was not overcrowded,
the dances were very enjoyable. The supper and the
utensils wherewith to eat it were provided from the race
fund ; and the whole thing was on a much grander and
more finished scale than that at Mozufferpore.

The weather was lovely, and the nights bright moon-
light ; and to me ten more enjoyable days cannot be
imagined. I had, of course, no cares of state ; but Blake
had a mass of correspondence forwarded daily, as had all
the other District Collectors here assembled. Poor Mel-
ville had to rush back in the middle of the enjoyments
to take up a serious dacoity case, which some most dis-
obliging dacoits had chosen to commit on the second day
of the meeting ; and as he had to leave all his family fully
established in the canvas town, with a good deal of his
household furniture, his bungalow must have looked very
bare, and all his surroundings have been melancholy. He
doubtless was better pleased than most of us when we all
returned to our respective homes and occupations.

In December, Blake went out bachelor-wise into camp,
and took me with him, to learn something of district work,
theoretically ; practically, for company's sake, and to give
me a chance of some shooting. I know that I did little
else but shoot large quantities of duck and black par-
tridges, and occasionally found the time rather long when
Blake was getting through heavy bundles of correspond-

Special Powers. 183

ence sent out to him by post, and in which I could be of
no use.

Tirhoot is a very pleasant district for camping out, with
numerous pleasant groves of trees under which to pitch
tents ; but, as a fact, there is not so much actual work to be
done here as in the districts of Eastern Bengal, where the
great rivers change the whole face of the country in their
neighbourhood, one may say, almost annually, and constant
re-settlements of the land are necessary.

At length, in January came the news that I had passed
by the Lower Standard, and I was empowered now to try
various criminal cases of a nature that I could not take
up before ; and I could pass sentences of six months' im-
prisonment, with or without labour, and a fine up to 200 rs.
Technically speaking, I was invested with " special
powers," and on the Collectorate side, I could try cases
under the Rent-law Act X. of 1859. Further, my pay
was increased by 50 rs. a month, making it 450 rs. monthly,
or £540 a year. I had to undergo a further examination
of a more difficult nature in the same subjects, and also in
Bengali in April.

All this might have come to me some two months
sooner, had it not been for the laziness of the member of
the Central Committee above mentioned ; and I had very
little time to get much Bengali ready by April next, the
more so as my work increased with my increased powers.
My resolution was to work very hard ; but alas ! in the
middle of January came the Mozufferpore races, all the
more enjoyable now that I knew everybody, and in
February Blake had a shooting party to the Terai, and

[84 Life in the Mofussil.

asked mc to go with him. The races passed off much as
those of the previous year ; but the jungle trip was my
first experience of the kind, and I looked forward to it
with the keenest anticipations of enjoyment. We had fifty
miles to drive to the Nepaulese frontier, where all roads
ended and we had to take to horseback. Our party
consisted of Blake and a friend, Colville, Macpherson, and
myself; and we started in two batches, Colville and myself
in the early morning, and the rest later on in the day, they
taking on the various relays of horses as we left them at
each place.

I think it may be laid down as a rule, that young men
in India who have any horses at all, have vicious ones, and
I was no exception to this rule. Two that I had on the
road were splendid goers when once started, but the diffi-
culty was to start. The one generally refused to move at
first, — I had bought her at Sonepore, — but once off, went
very fast, and never tired. It required very careful coaxing
and management to get her off. The other was only too
anxious to start, and gave no time to get into the vehicle
to which she was attached ; the only plan was, to creep up
behind, without allowing her to suspect any designing
person of a desire to enter the dog-cart, and be content with
being able to get one foot on the step. The moment she
felt the pressure on the shafts, away she would go ; and if
checked, became very violent, — she was a very big, powerful
animal, — and generally upset whatever she might be draw-
ing into the nearest ditch.

I understood them both, and Colville understood all
horses, — though he rather chafed at having to give in to

En route to the Terai. 185

their caprices in this way, — so we got on capitally, and
arrived at our rendezvous, — a hospitable planter's bunga-
low, at the very edge of the district,— in excellent time.
We expected the others some three hours later, in time
to go on all together to our first camp before dark. But
evening came on, and there were no signs of them. I
began to get a little anxious ; and as Colville and I knew
that none of the trio behind were good at the manage-
ment of horses, we were afraid they might have broken
down altogether. Our host was the only person pleased,
as it gave him the certainty of company for one evening
at any rate. We had half finished our dinner, which had
been keep waiting some time, when the sound of wheels
was heard at the door ; and on hastening out we found
our three friends, not in the best of tempers.

" You're a pretty fellow to trust to for daks ! " growled
Macpherson.

" Never mind," said our host ; " don't say anything
about your misadventures until you have had some
dinner, and then you can grumble as you please."

So our repast was resumed; and in the genial presence
of bottled beer, accidents that had appeared simply irrita-
ting before, now began to assume somewhat of the ludicrous ;
and finally we got a good-humoured account of the details.
It appeared that the first-mentioned of the two mares
had shown signs of an unwillingness to start, and Mac-
pherson had in an ill-judged way used the whip. This
decided her not to move, and she had stubbornly resisted
all efforts to do so for a whole hour. At length the syce's
plan was adopted, of leaning with all his weight against

1 86 Life in the Mofussil.

one shaft; when the marc shifted a little, the other syce,
belonging to the horse recently taken out, began to lean
against the other shaft; and so, as she got no ease stand-
ing still, she finally elected to go on, and carried them
through the dak splendidly.

At the next dak, the syce had warned them of the
peculiarities of the big marc; but Macpherson, who was
to take the back seat of the dog-cart, was not sufficiently
quick in jumping in, and as she plunged forward lost
his hold and was left on his back in the middle of the
road. Blake, who was driving, had to pull up, whereat
the mare became violent, backed them all into the ditch,
and turned out him and his friend, and all the guns and
things they had with them. She also fell down herself.
They promptly sat on her head and undid the harness,
and hoped to get her out without any breakage ; but just
at the last moment, she gave one kick and sent one of the
shafts flying. Nobody, however, was hurt, and a speci-
men of the all-useful bamboo was procured and tied on
to serve as a shaft ; but then it was found impossible to
harness her again, and after many vain attempts, it was
decided to re-harness the other mare, and trust that she
would consent to start. She was somewhat subdued
with her previous work, and now an obedient, instead of
a capricious servant, for she went off at once, and did
her second stage as well as the first.

" And now," said Blake, " what do you mean, sir, by
endangering your superior officer's life in this way?"

" I can lend my superior officer horses," I replied, " but
I can't give him understanding- how to manage them."

Two Ill-tempered Horses. 187

Every man stands up for his own animals ; but my
remark was not justified by the facts. Blake was much
too good-tempered to be angry, however ; and I may here
mention the end of these animals. The first I sold
soon afterwards at the price I paid for her. The big mare
I kept obstinately for some two years. She smashed one
dog-cart of mine afterwards; and I finally lent her to a
friend, whom she upset, and falling down herself too,
tried to kick the shaft away as on this occasion ; her leg
however came in contact with the step of the dog-cart
instead, and she died from the effects of the injury.

The fact is, that with us horses were always driven
before they were properly broken ; and I mention the
above to show the sort of thing that constantly occurred
when driving long stages. Sometimes the escapes were
marvellous. Soon after this, a friend of mine was driving
his sister and her little girl over a bridge where a weak
bamboo railing served as a parapet. In crossing, the
horse took fright at something, and, refusing to go on,
began to back against the railing. He saw the danger and
said to his sister, "Get out and take the child." She jumped
out ; but as he was handing her the child, the railing
gave way, and he and the little girl, cart, and horse
were precipitated into the water, some fifteen feet below.
The sister, in relating the story to me, said she recollected
nothing more till she found herself in the water, — which
was fortunately only between three and four feet deep, —
groping for the child, and saw her brother doing the same.
He finally caught her by the hair and handed her to his
sister. The final result of all this was, that beyond the

1 88 Life in the Mofussil.

bending of one step of the dog-cart, and the ducking
and fright, no damage was done. The villagers of the
neighbourhood came to their assistance, and they were
able actually to re-harness the horse and drive on.

The next day we rode on to our camp, some twenty
miles across the frontier. Blake had a pass from the
Nepaulese authorities, so we entered that country without
hindrance and found our camp in the afternoon on the
banks of the Bhagmatty, a river flowing down from the
Nepaulese hills, now close by, and with big-tree forests
all round us. We had four tents, Colville's being the
largest ; but we used that also for feeding purposes. This
was my first experience of a jungle expedition, and I
was quite astonished at the army of followers that seemed
necessary for our comfort and convenience. Of course,
everything for eating and drinking purposes had to be
brought with us, as nothing except water was procurable
on the spot. We had too, forty-eight elephants, — a very
large number for a private party, — and these necessitated
ninety-six men to look after them, and conveyances for their
food also. As it got dark, and the various fires flickering
caused fantastic lights and shadows among the tall trees,
the scene was picturesque indeed ; and it was too delight-
ful to be lulled to sleep by the sound of the river running
over its pebbly bottom — a sound never heard further down
in the plains, where a stone is never seen. It was cheery
too to be roused in the morning by the shrill crow of the
jungle cock (our game fowl), which are very numerous
here, and to feel that a long day's sport was before one.

But we did not make a start before 10 a.m., for first

Camp in the Forest. 189

of all the elephants had to be washed like babies.
Each was taken down to the river, where, at the orders
of its mahout, it lay down in the shallow water, and
instead of being soaped, was holy-stoned all over, and
then allowed to have a good wallow to wash itself clean.
This done, the sun soon dried them, and ornamental fringes
were painted with whitening on their foreheads and on
their noses, or rather the places where their noses would
have been if they had not had trunks instead. At
length all was ready, five staunch elephants were chosen
from the rest to carry our howdahs, eight smaller ones
were detached to get forage for the rest, and with the
remaining thirty-five we formed line, and commenced to
crash through the forest.

The trees were tall and the underwood not so very
thick at our starting point, so the work was comparatively
easy. Almost immediately, a peacock flew up in front of
me. I had my ball-gun in my hand, and did not fire,
but put it down and took up my shot-gun, when almost
directly a beautiful spotted deer went bounding away to
my right, and was well out of sight before I had time
to pick up my rifle and bring it to bear. This was
puzzling, but very exciting, as no one knew what game
might be sighted at any moment, from a snipe to a tiger.
Presently the jungle got more difficult ; and it was then
wonderful to see the intelligent manner in which the
elephants worked their way through it, and the consider-
ation those which carried howdahs showed for their
riders. They would push bodily down small trees, i.e.,
under thirty feet high, by putting a forefoot against them

190 Life in the Mofussil.

and swaying backwards and forwards until the trunk
yielded to the weighty pressure ; at the command of the
mahout they would put their trunks up and break off
any branch that would otherwise knock off the head or
the hat of the occupant of the howdah ; or, if a mass
of creepers clinging to the forest trees barred the way,
would stop and patiently pull them down in detail until
progress was possible.

All this, of course, rendered it difficult to keep line, and
yet considerable abuse fell to the lot of those whom
Blake's eye caught lagging behind. He commanded our
party, and was himself under the guidance of our "shi-
karree," a wiry old Nepaulee, whom we all treated with
great deference in the hope that civility would induce
him to show us an extra tiger or two. The first day's
sport resulted in a few deer, jungle fowl, and other small
game ; and we sat down to our dinner and a rubber
afterwards by no means dissatisfied. For on our return to
camp we received information that a cow had been killed
by a tiger not very far off, and we hoped to get sight
of him on the morrow. Large quantities of cattle are
driven into the forest during the dry weather for pasture ;
but though they pay nothing for their food the losses
by tigers must cost the herdsmen dear.

The next morning the order was, to fire at nothing
but tiger; and rather wearisome work I found it. If the
scent were very hot, then it was easy enough to refrain ;
but beating as we did for hour after hour through ap-
parently interminable jungle, alternating between tall
trees with tangled undergrowth where it was dark at

A Tiger. 1 9 1

midday, and comparatively open places covered with tall
grass from sixteen to twenty feet high, it seemed hope-
less to expect to hit upon one particular animal, and
the precaution of not firing appeared useless. And then,
too, every other species of game seemed more plenti-
ful than ever, as it always does on these occasions.

At length, after some four hours' hard beating, we had
just crashed through a dark bit of forest and were emerg-
ing on an open grassy bit of small extent, when my ele-
phant showed signs of uneasiness and gave that shrill
scream called " trumpeting," which was taken up by the
rest. My mahout pointed silently to the tall grass
waving sinuously to my right front and just before Colville,
as if some large animal were moving quietly along at the
bottom. Colville was peering down as if hard staring
would enable him to pierce through the sixteen feet of
grass covering, and my chuprassie in the hind seat of the
howdah began to cough nervously, and said, " Bagh hoga
khudawind." (It will be a tiger, my lord.)

It was very exciting. We all pressed on. Suspicion became
certainty, as the sinuous wave became more rapid. And
as the grass got thinner on the edge of the trees we were
now approaching, on the other side of the open bit, a fine
tiger became visible, trotting quietly along; and we all blazed
at him, almost simultaneously. He gave no sign, but dis-
appeared in the forest underwood. We all believed, at
the moment, that we had hit him. The wish was doubtless
father to the thought, and the word to " chase " was given.
Our line got much scattered in our eagerness, and I be-
came somewhat separated from the rest.

:q2 Life in the Moftissil.

We went crashing through the thick forest, when sud-
denly I came upon a group of dead trees, and on every
tree was a huge serpent, some coiled asleep on a withered
branch, and others half hanging down, as if in search of
prey. In our excitement we had got amongst them with-
out perceiving it ; and as many of them were on branches
just on a level with my howdah, the sensation was not
pleasant ; in fact it was " creepy," and I felt inclined to
compress as much of my person as possible inside my
howdah, and I have no doubt my mahout and chuprassie
felt the same. I have never seen anything like it since,
and we three were the only members of our party who saw
it. We stood for a moment until we caught the sounds of
the others breaking through the jungle in the distance, and
hastened to join them, leaving our serpents in statu quo.

On coming up with the others, I tried to get them in-
terested about this ; but they were much too excited about
the tiger, and I could command no attention. The
serpents were doubtless of the Python species, of which
there are a good many in the Terai forests ; but it was very
exceptional to see so many collected together and in such
positions. It was horribly weird, and the impression it
produced on me was lasting.

We went on chasing our tiger for some two hours ; and
then gave him up as a bad job. This is a veracious history,
and I must admit, that, whether we hit him or not, we did
not bag that tiger. Barring the surrounding scenery and
the subjective excitement, the incident was tame enough,
for the animal trotted as coolly away as if he had been
a calf or a donkey, and quite accustomed to the proximity

A Panic abotd a Pig. 193

of human beings. It was vexatious to miss him, as both
Colville and Blake were good shots, and in this very after-
noon I saw Macpherson, who was not a good shot, put a
bullet through the neck of a peacock that was sitting on
the dead branch of a tree at nearly 100 yards' distance, and
shortly after kill at one shot a spotted deer that was
bounding along at a great pace, and certainly eighty or
ninety yards from him. These were both flukes, doubt-
less ; but we wished that one of them had come off on the
tiger.

During the remaining eight days that we shot, we did
not see another tiger, though we had plenty of " khabar "
(news). Indeed one day a herdsman came running in to
tell us that a tiger had just attacked one of his herd, and
that he had struck him with a bamboo, and frightened him
off. We saw the cow all bleeding from claw wounds, but
never got a sight of the tiger. The intrepidity of the herds-
man struck me very much ; but I suppose the tiger could
not have been very hungry, or he would not have yielded
his prey so easily.

One amusing incident was our whole, line of forty
elephants being put to flight by a small pig scarcely a
foot long. We were beating across a wide expanse of open
grass, and in very good line, when a shrill grunt was
heard, and something seemed to charge our very centre.
Blake's elephant turned tail, and a panic seized all the
rest ; with some difficulty we got them round and went on
again, and the same thing was repeated three times. At
length Blake got a sight of the small creature and shot
him ; and as he was hoisted on to a pad elephant, it seemed

VOL. I. O

194 Life l!l thc Mofussil.

too ridiculous that such a tiling, not more than a foot long,
should three times have put to flight forty elephants and
five sahibs with guns and innumerable followers : and it
was a good proof of what terribly nervous things elephants
can be. Colville moralized in a melancholy way over his
death, and regretted bitterly that he had not been allowed
to come to maturity in a ridable country.

And now it was time to leave the happy hunting
grounds and return to our workaday life. We had had
very inferior sport, for the very good reason that we had
come up much too early : the grass jungle and underwood
was green and thick, and had not been thinned at all by
the fires which always occur later on in the season. But
we had had a most pleasant ten days, and finished our
party in the very sincere hope that we should again join
for a similar purpose. The journey back afforded no
special excitement ; my obstreperous horses had been re-
placed by others, and no upsets occurred.

The morning after my return I received a note from
Melville, stating that an addition to his family had necessi-
tated his being. up all night, and asking me to go to office
and take his seat for the day. I was too glad to be of
such importance and assumed his place with a certain sense
of dignity. Cases already commenced by him had of
course to be postponed ; but I ordered the new ones to
be brought up, and began to give orders for the issue of
summonses, etc. The Sherishtadar here addressed me in
an under-tone, and very definitely pointed out that my
orders were illegal, as I had not been empowered by
Government to receive new complaints, but only to try

Illegal Orders. 195

such cases as were specially made over to me. In fact I
was acting altogether without jurisdiction. " Oh," I said,
" it's only for to-day." Not a very logical reply ; but he
acquiesced with a shrug of the shoulders, which meant to
say that he had divested himself of responsibility. No-
body else objected, and no doubt many persons came in on
illegal summonses and warrants ; but no harm was done, as
no one else appeared to discover the technical flaw.

CHAPTER VII.

ASSISTANT MAGISTRATE /AT CHARGE Ob DURBIIUNGAH.

TAKE OVER CHARGE FROM MY PREDECESSOR.— BUTWARRAS.— A
DIFFICULT CASE. — SECOND EXAMINATION. — VOLUNTEER CAVALRY.
— PUBLIC MEETING. — " IZZAT " ACCIDENT AT COURT.— INVESTED
WITH FULL POWERS. — A NATIVE NOBLEMAN.

However my importance became real some few days
afterwards, for on the 13th of March I received the official
announcement that " His Honour the Lieut.-Governor
of Bengal had been pleased to appoint me to the charge
of the subdivision of Durbhungah, and had also empowered
me to hold the preliminary inquiry into cases triable by
the Court of Session, and commit or hold to bail persons
to take their trial before such Court, in accordance with
Sec. XXXVIII. of the Criminal Procedure Code." This
special empowering was rendered necessary by the fact
that I was only a subordinate magistrate of the 1st class,
and had not been invested with the full powers of a
magistrate, as I had not passed my second examination.

It seems odd that an official not yet considered fit to
take cognizance of all magisterial cases arising within his
local jurisdiction, should be appointed the sole criminal
authority in charge of an area of over 2,000 square miles in
extent ; but yet this was by no means unusual, as there
was a scarcity of full-power officers to take charge of ap-

Appointed to Durbhungah. 197

pointments of this sort, the more so as Government was
extending the system, and a great number of new sub-
divisional jurisdictions were being created in each dis-
trict. At this time Tirhoot, with its 6,343 square miles, had
only one, and all criminal cases had to be instituted here
or at the head quarters, which caused great inconvenience
to many suitors, in consequence of the long distances they
had to come. But five or six years subsequently, this one
was multiplied into six, Durbhungah itself being split up
into three ;' and I now learn that it has been elevated into
a separate district.

The head-quarters of the subdivision were only at this
moment in course of being established at Durbhungah, for
heretofore they had been at a place called Buheyra, some
twenty-seven miles further to the south-east ; some official
apparently having looked at the map and thought that
this spot seemed central. Geographically speaking, it
may have been so ; but it was far away from all big towns
or even large villages, and consequently nearly all the
business transacted in the Court appertained to people
who came from a long distance.

When the estate of the Maharajah of Durbhungah came
under the management of the Court of Wards, and the
European manager came to reside partly at Durbhungah,
he found it exceedingly inconvenient to have the Magis-
trate's Court so far away ; and he was able also truly to
represent that Durbhungah was the largest town in the
Tirhoot District, and that it was only reasonable the Court
should be located there. He was further able to offer
a small building as a residence for the Magistrate, and

igS Life in the Mofussil.

another for his Court. Government had just accepted these
proposals, and the officer at present in charge was engaged
in moving himself and all his paraphernalia of office
from Buheyra to Durbhungah.

He was a young fellow, — Lewis by name, — in the un-
covenantcd service, and had just received an appointment
in the new police, which he was most anxious to take up,
so he had written and implored me to relieve him as soon
as possible. My next examination was to begin on the
6th of April, and Blake suggested that I need not join
until after that was over ; but Lewis had to be examined
himself, and as we must both be away some third person
would have to be in charge during our absence ; and as
I was keen to get to more important work, I determined
to gratify him and myself, and go there without delay.

My traps were very soon packed, and three ordinary
native carts sufficed for their carriage. The furniture was
not bulky, and consisted of a bed (which I could carry
myself, if necessary), one toilette table (considered a sign
of extra refinement), one writing table of antique design,
purchased in Mozufferpore, one cane arm-chair and three
ordinary chairs, glass, crockery, etc., for about six people,
a few sheets and towels, and one book-case, value about
eight shillings. My books and a howdah were the heaviest
articles to be conveyed.

The distance to Durbhungah was about thirty-five miles,
there being four unbridged rivers to cross ; but they gave
little trouble in the dry season, though in the rains they
increased not only in size, but in number, for they became
seven. All things considered, I gave the carts two days'

Quarters at the Dak Bungalow. 199

start ; and on the 19th, or six days after I had received the
orders, was on the road thither myself.

The new Assistant Superintendent of Police, an Irish-
man who had found his way out to India, via Australia,
because he had nothing better to do, and who scarcely
knew one word of Hindustani, accompanied me. He was
a very good fellow, and very amusing, though it would be
some time before he would be of much use. Shortly before
reaching Durbhungah we picked up, at short intervals, two
pieces of wood, which proved to be the tops of two of my
chairs, and this augured badly for the state of my traps ;
but on reaching my destination, about 1 1 a.m., we found
nothing lost, though everything was very thoroughly im-
pregnated with dust.

I had ordered my servants to stop at the dak bungalow,
which I found to be of a better class than those ordinarily
provided by Government. This had originally been erected
by the planters in this portion of the district, or almost
entirely at their expense, and had been made over to
Government on condition of its being kept in repair. It
was consequently on a more liberal scale than usual, and
was situated just outside the moat surrounding the Rajah's
palace, and well away from the native bazaar, which was a
great consideration.

After breakfast, I went through the native town to the
residence that had been proposed for me by the manager
of the Durbhungah estate ; but it looked so dismal, was so
far from the Cutchcrry, which was in the palace grounds,
and so disagreeably situated, that I determined not to live
there, but to get on as best I could in the dak bungalow,

coo Life in the Mofussil.

which I found, on inquiry, was nearly always empty, and
the rent o( which would be only I r. per da)', equal to £$
a month. Of course I ran the risk of being compelled to
turn out if there were a large influx of travellers ; but I
thought that was not likely, and at any rate determined
not to be anxious about it beforehand. Lewis came in to
dinner in the evening. He had only just completed moving
the office paraphernalia into Durbhungah, and said he
would give over charge the next day. He seemed quite
delighted at the prospect of getting away.

The poor policeman was struck down with fever, and
could not join us. He had caught it in Assam, and was
subject to severe attacks of it. To the east of the dak
bungalow there was a large expanse of low ground, one of
the depressions I have spoken of as existing in Tirhoot,
which was never entirely free from water, and in the rainy
season was covered to the depth of several feet. Poor
Doyle (the policeman) had remarked in the morning that
it looked " feverish," and his foreboding in his own case
proved unfortunately too true. The next morning he was
a little better, but very weak, and so strongly of opinion
that the place would kill him that he got into a palanquin
and went straight back to Mozufferpore. He never
returned.

About noon I went over to the building allotted as a
Cutcherry by the manager, and found it surrounded by a
large crowd outside, and crammed to suffocation within.
It consisted of one centre room, about eighteen feet
square, and two small closets on each side, about ten and
eight feet square respectively. On two sides were veran-

Siibdivisional Court Hutise. 201

dahs, with slanting roofs of tiled thatch, supported by
masonry pillars. The masonry roof was surrounded by an
ornamental balustrade, also of masonry. The centre room
was, of course, the Court room, and was furnished with a
"takhtaposh" (wooden platform), about six inches high, on
which was placed a dirty old folding table (commonly
called a camp table), and on each side of it a wooden
bench for the clerks. The little room, or closet, on the
right was called the record room, and the English clerk
sat there and prepared the returns and registers, while all
round were "almirahs" (cupboards), full of records of cases,
etc., in the vernacular, and one containing the papers con-
nected with the English correspondence of the office. The
room on the left was made the Treasury.

At this time much business was not transacted in Sub-
divisional Treasuries, though a great deal more was soon
afterwards thrown upon them, and for the present I had
only to take over charge of the stamps, and the money
received on account of previous sale of stamps, deposits
in rent suits, and criminal fines. All Court fees in India
are collected by stamps, the plaints, replies, and other
documents being written on paper bearing the stamp of
the value required by law. These were sold at my office ;
and one of the most wearisome parts of my duty as a
subdivisional officer, was counting these when they
arrived from head-quarters on my indent ; for supposing
any deficiency should occur in the accounts, I was held
personally responsible for the difference. On this occasion
a new stock had just been received, and it occupied some
two hours counting them — Lewis and myself and three

202 Life in the Mofussil.

clerks and two policemen of the Treasury police guard all
counting as hard as we could. The stamps are made up in
parcels of 100 at the Government Stationery Office in
Calcutta, and were so received by us from the head-
quarters at Mozufferpore ; but it was necessary to count
each stamp paper, in order to be safe, so we handed them
out in similar bundles to each enumerator. The policemen
counted slowly and badly, and were constantly arriving at
results of ninety-eight, ninety-nine, and 101, instead of the
exact ioo, which necessitated the recounting of the bundles,
with the result always of finding them correct. On one
occasion, however, I recollect finding thirty-two stamps, of
the value of 4s. each, short ; and the Deputy Collector in
charge of the Treasury at Mozufferpore had to make good
that amount in money, as he had neglected to see them
counted before sending them out to me, though there was
no proof that the correct number had ever been received
from the head office in Calcutta. These stamp papers were
sold to licensed stamp vendors in the town, paid by a
discount of four per cent, on their purchases, for whom I
opened my stamp shop twice a month, and by them to
suitors ; and in order to have some sort of check on their
being used for fraudulent purposes, the vendors were re-
quired by law to endorse on each paper sold the date of
sale and the name of the purchaser. Their books also
were liable to inspection on my demand. I also sold
postage and receipt stamps.

This over, we went into the record room, where I con-
tented myself with looking into the cupboards and glanc-
ing at the so-called library ; and then Lewis and I signed

Establishment. 203

two reports to be sent to Blake, one for the Magisterial and
one for the Collectorate side, to the effect that we had
respectively received and given over charge of the sub-
division of Durbhungah. Lewis then went off to prepare
for his departure, and I entered upon the duties of office.
My Court establishment, I found, consisted of the follow-
ing members : —

One English-knowing writer, or sherishtadar, at . ,£3 10 monthly.

One clerk, or mohurrir, knowing Hindustani only, at 2 10 „

One nazir, Treasury officer, etc 20 „

One clerk, or mohurrir 16 „

Two ditto, ditto 10 „ .

One potdar, or money-weigher, assistant to nazir .012 „

One duftry chuprassie (pen-mender, etc.) ....012 ,,

One chuprassie o 10 „

The second of these was really the most important man in
the office, and had been called sherishtadar until the recent
change which allowed subdivisional officers English clerks,
these latter being fully occupied with English correspon-
dence and the preparation of the English registers and
returns. The duties of the second clerk were to read over
to the Magistrate the reports received daily from all
sources in the vernacular, to record his orders, and to make
them over to the police court inspector on the Criminal
side, and to the nazir on the Collectorate side, for trans-
mission, either by post or special messenger, also to bring
forward all the cases in their due turn, and to prepare or
supervise the keeping up of all the registers and returns
not connected with the Treasury, many of which would be
afterwards translated into English by the English clerk —

204 Life in the Mofussil.

no light work, as on the Collectoratc side alone he had
to keep up forty-nine registers ; and the returns monthly,
quarterly, and yearly were even more numerous, to say
nothing of those on the Magisterial side. The nazir had
charge of the treasury, stamps, etc., and also the issue of
summonses and processes in cases on the Collectorate side,
and was expected to be generally useful. The other clerks
were principally employed in writing, under the supervision
of the second clerk.

Lewis had worked well, and left me with a tolerably
clear file, so that my first day's business was not very
heavy ; and as no cases had been fixed for hearing before
the following Monday, to avoid inconvenience from any
delay in my arrival, this being a Friday, I had two days of
comparative leisure. Lewis went off in a palanquin after
dinner, and I felt rather deserted in the dak bungalow all
by myself, the only English face within a radius of thirteen
or fourteen miles.

The next morning I took a ride through the town, and
found it in a beastly state of filth, the thoroughfares
covered with refuse, and obstructed by mat erections, ve-
randahs, etc., at the will of individuals. No European
official had been stationed here before, so that everything
of this nature had been allowed to go on in pure native
fashion. This afforded food for reflection ; but the question
was, how to begin to do any good.

On going to office, the first thing was to listen to the
reports of a miscellaneous nature sent through the police,
cattle-pound keepers, district postal officials, chowkedarree
tax darogahs, etc., on the Magisterial side ; and on the Col-

The Sherishtadar. 205

lectorate side the various reports from the nazir and the
ameens sent out in cases of settlements and butwarrahs
(partitions of estates). The second clerk, Jugdeo Sahai
by name, read these out in a glib way ; and though I under-
stood their purport, I found it uncommonly difficult to
pass orders on each sur le champ, so he (who, of course,
knew what a novice I was) suggested the orders to be
passed on each. This at first I was inclined to resent, but
as I had nothing else to propose, I ended by saying,
"Accha" (very well); and he dictated the order to the
third clerk, sitting next him, who wrote it on the back of
the report, and then it was handed to me for signature.
E.g., the pound-keeper of Rowsara sent in a report " that
the pound was very much out of repair, and solicited
permission to put it in order." I had not the slightest idea
what to order ; and Jugdeo suggested that the pound-
keeper should be ordered to report when the pound had
been last repaired, and also to send an estimate of the
probable cost of the proposed new repairs. This seemed
common sense when suggested, and so did all the other
suggestions ; but it was annoying to feel one's ignorance
and want of savoir faire in the matter, and it took me
some little time to obtain the experience necessary to
get on without him.

The reports from the chowkedarree tax-darogahs were
chiefly with reference to the non-payment of the house-tax,
assessed under Act XX. of 1856, the law relating to the
appointment and payment of the rural town police. The
tax was assessed by a Punchayet, or committee of rate-
payers appointed by the Magistrate, and was an assessment,

2o6 Life in the Mofussil.

according to the circumstances and the property to be
protected, of the persons liable to the same, and not to
exceed in the aggregate an average rate of threepence
per month per house. In no case was a sum higher than
the pay of a chowkeydar, or policeman of the lowest grade,
Ss., per month, to be assessed on any one house. Any
surplus remaining after payment of the chowkeydar's wages
and the salaries of the tax darogahs was to be available
for conservancy purposes. There was an appeal to me
from the assessments made by the punchayet, and from
me to Blake.

When these reports were read, I mentioned to Jugdeo
Sahai the filthy state of the town that I had observed in
the morning, and asked him if there were any surplus funds
that could be made available for its improvement. He
said that nothing had ever been done, and that the surplus
had been sent to the Treasury at Mozufferpore, where it
would be placed to the credit of the town of Durbhungah.
" But," he said, " it will be very little. However, now for
the first time, an officer of the Covenanted Civil Service
has been appointed to this subdivision, bringing with him
greater dignity and (as he put it in his high-flown Hindu-
stani, or rather Persian) ' splendour of the day ' (raunak-af-
roz). If your highness will allow me to bring the attention
of the rich men of the place to the matter, and then call a
meeting, we might get up a subscription." This sounded
very sensible, so I assented, and began to understand the
potentiality of "moral influence " in such matters.

When the batwarra reports were brought forward, it
appeared there was one from the ameen employed in

A Bahvarra. 207

making the partition of an estate named " Chakka." I
must explain more fully the meaning of the term " bat-
warra." In Bengal most estates, whether in Hindoo or
Mohammedan families, are held in joint undivided tenancy,
called in the vernacular " ijmali." There being no primo-
geniture, the shares in estates are divided equally as regards
the rental, but no one has any specific portion of land.
The Government revenue also is assessed on the whole
estate, and the shareholders settle among themselves the
method and means of payment of the revenue, as, if not
paid on the due date, the whole estate is put up to auction.
The proprietors, however, retain the right to divide the
estate, and to claim, — each shareholder or group of share-
holders,— his or their specific portion of land. But Govern-
ment also has a voice in the matter, for fear the division
should be collusive ; for the law is, that when the estate is
divided, the Government revenue is assessed on each share
proportionately to its value. Now cases did occur in which
by collusion all the bad land was allotted to one share-
holder and valued at an altogether false rental. This
share, when separated, would stand in the Government
register of revenue-paying estates as a separate estate,
would be responsible for its own revenue, would not pay it,
and would be put up for sale ; the result being, that no one
would bid for it, and Government would lose its revenue.
The remaining shareholders would lose this amount of
land ; but they would also be rid of the liability to pay to
Government a sum altogether disproportionate to the
amount of land lost.

To avoid this, therefore, Government, under Regulation

208 Life in the Mofussil.

X 1 X. of 1 8 14, had power to refuse to sanction any batwar-
r.i, unless satisfied of its being fair and just ; and so the
actual details of partition were carried out by officers called
ameens, under the supervision of the Collector and Deputy
Collectors. It continually happened that the shareholders
could not agree about the specific portions of land to be
allotted to each; and it was sometimes exceedingly difficult,
if not impossible, to satisfy them all, and also the require-
ments of Government, the chief of which was, that each
of the allotments should be compact, with well-defined
boundaries. The most important point, then, was to
ascertain the actual annual value of each and every piece
of land comprised in the estate, and to get all the share-
holders to give their signatures to the document setting
forth the value so ascertained. This once done, it only
remained to apportion a proper amount of land to each ;
and a recalcitrant shareholder could be compelled to accept
an allotment so made.

In this particular case the ameen had drawn up the
document above mentioned, called in the vernacular the
" rye bundee," and all the shareholders had signed it ex-
cept one, the "objector," Jymal AH byname. I put the
"objector " in italics, because he was the important person
who made all cases easy or difficult, short or long ; and the
first question one used to ask in any case of this nature,
when brought up by the clerk, was, "Is there an 'objector'?"
Jymal Ali was continually before me afterwards, and was
one of those litigious persons who are a nuisance to Courts
and to everybody connected with them by ties of relation-
ship or in business matters.

An Objector. 209

It appeared that no less than three times had the " rye
bundee" been prepared, and three times had Jymal Ali
refused his assent. On looking over the objections raised
by him, I found there were 603 plots of land or fields in
the estate, and that he objected to the rates of value fixed
on about half of them. " The only way to settle the matter
finally," said Jugdeo Sahai, "is to go to the spot yourself;
and what you assert to be right cannot be contradicted.
This case has been pending a long time, and if your high-
ness should think fit to go tp the spot before the weather
gets too hot, and camp there for two or three days, you
could get the matter finished before you start for your ex-
amination. Besides, there is not a great pressure of cases
in Court just now." Sensible advice again, which I thought
best to follow. The place was only about fourteen miles
from Durbhungah, though, as there were no roads in the
vicinity, it was awkward to get at ; but I issued notice to
all concerned to be there on the following Tuesday, by
daybreak.

My first Sunday was lonely and wearisome. Nobody to
talk to but native servants ; no church nearer than Mozuffer-
pore, thirty-five miles off; no Cutcherry to occupy the time.
However, I busied myself in supervising the start of my
servants and tent for Chakka. Jugdeo Sahai went on an
elephant with the ameen early the next day, and I started
in the afternoon to ride half-way, and with an elephant to
carry me the last half, where the ground was heavy and
swampy.

The next day I was up at 5 a.m., and after a cup of coffee
mounted my elephant with my chuprassie behind me with

VOL. I. P

210 Life in the Mofussil,

a gun, in case of any game appearing, and Jugdeo and a
clerk on another elephant (we had borrowed the two at
Durbhungah) ; while Jymal Ali and the other shareholders
or their legal representatives were on foot. At 5.45, we
commenced operations ; for, the tent being pitched about
the centre of the estate, our work lay all around us. It
seemed that here the rent was paid in kind, and not in
money ; so it was necessary for me to fix, not the money
rental, but the actual produce in grain of each field. I felt
a little diffident in the matter ; but I recollected Blake's
remark, that a Civilian must appear to know everything,
and so determined to pronounce my decisions boldly. I
had also looked over the papers, and seen the amounts fixed
by the ameen, and so had something to go by. Jymal
Ali's objections were to the effect that in all the fields
allotted to him the ameen had overrated the produce, and
underrated it in those allotted to the other shareholders.
All I had to do was to make my estimate just on the
average.

There was a great wrangle over Plot 1, which the ameen
had put down as able to produce seventeen maunds per
beegah (local standard of measurement), which Jymal said
would only give ten. This was in his allotment. I listened
without speaking to the various statements, and then calmly
from my elevated seat said " sixteen maunds," and ordered
(despite the protestations of Jymal) a move on to the next
plot. As the day wore on, he and the others too began
to get a little tired ; and every now and then I got him to
admit that the rate laid down for one field was applicable
to the next ten, and so saved a great deal of time and

A Summary Assessment. 2 1 1

trouble. By 1 1 o'clock it was desperately hot, and a
terrible west hot dry wind blowing, so we adjourned for
breakfast and rest, I to my tent, they to the neighbour-
ing small village. By this time we had accomplished 150
fields.

My tent was miserably hot and uncomfortable, for there
were no big trees in the neighbourhood under which to
pitch it, and the full glare of the March sun came down
upon it ; while I was obliged to keep the canvas doors
shut to keep out the wind and dust. At 4 o'clock I made
another start ; but Jymal Ali was much refreshed with
his rest, and his objections were more violent and vocifer-
ous than ever, so we only got through another 70 fields by
sunset. The next morning and afternoon we got through
another 220 fields ; and in the middle of a wrangle about
the rates of one plot bordering on a small piece of water,
a flight of teal got up, and I managed to bag a brace,
which elicited ejaculations of admiration from the spec-
tators, evinced by shouts of wah ! wah ! and formed a very
pleasant addition to my larder, which had been supplied
hitherto with tough and skinny fowls from the neighbour-
ing Mohammedan village.

The next day we came to the close, for which I was
truly thankful ; and I think even Jymal Ali was glad.
Among other things, I had had to estimate the number
of mangoes likely to be produced by each and every tree
in a grove on the estate. A record of the rates fixed for
each plot had been kept by Jugdeo as it had been pro-
nounced by me ; and now, in order to prevent any future
objections, I called upon the shareholders to sign it on the

2 1 2 Life in the Mofussil.

spot. This they all did willingly enough, except Jymal,
who said he would come to Cutcherry and sign it.

After much demur, he took the paper and squatted down
in the field to write. He seemed to be a longish time, so
I made my elephant kneel down, and went up to him, and
found that he was adding after his signature, " bamoujib
hukum hakim ke " (in accordance with the order of the
hakim). I got in a great rage, and I don't recollect what
I said ; but it had the effect of making him smudge it out
with his finger, and so the matter was settled. Had the
words been allowed to remain, it would have given him an
opportunity of making objections afterwards, and perhaps
rendering of no avail all the time and labour spent on the
spot. As it was, I may add here, that this case was now
brought to a conclusion without any further trouble ; and
the other shareholders were spared any addition to the
litigation and expense they had been subjected to for the
last five years. It was amusing to think that the ipse
dixit of so very inexperienced a person as myself should
have settled this very complicated matter ; but it serves
to show what weight is attached to personal investigation
by an English official.

On getting back to my tent, I found the owner of an
indigo factory in the neighbourhood, the largest in this
part, awaiting me. He was only five miles off, he said,
and had he known previously that I was here before, he
would have come over sooner to ask me to take up my
quarters at his house. The country was ridable ; and
would I come over now. It was quite delightful to see a
white face again and to talk English ; so I accepted his

Second Standard Examination. 213

invitation with pleasure, and we had a refreshing canter
over to Kundowl. I could not have gone before, as it
would have kept me too late from my work in the morn-
ing. There was an artificial lake, called " a tank," here,
and we had a long swim before dinner, which was most
refreshing after the heat and dust of the day. A cheerful
repast and a game of billiards passed the evening plea-
santly enough, and it was with regret the next morning
that I made an early start for Durbhungah, some thirteen
miles distant. There was a road all the way, and my host
supplied me with horses and dog-cart to get there.

The dak bungalow seemed very lonely as I drove up,
and the low-lying land in front of it looked dismal. But
after breakfast I went to Cutcherry, and found that cases
had somewhat accumulated during my three days' absence,
and that there was work to occupy me fully until the
evening. This state of things lasted till it became time to
start for Patna for my examination. A European Deputy
Magistrate, Davison by name, was sent out to take charge
of the subdivision during my absence. He was old and
greyheaded, and told me that as he should not be able to
finish any cases before my return, he should only pass the
necessary orders to keep things going.

My examination on this occasion afforded no details
worthy of record, except that I had to go through a trial
in Bengali, in which the Local Committee passed me ; but
it appeared doubtful whether the Central Committee would
think the papers good enough.

On my return to Mozuffcrporc, I was delayed four days
to take part in a meeting of the Tirhoot Cavalry Volun-

2 14 Life in the Mofussil.

teers. The movement had been set on foot in consequence
of certain rumours about another mutiny, which never had
any foundation at all ; but it was also recollected that the
Tirhoot officials had been compelled to leave their posts
in the Mutiny, in consequence of the absence of any sort of
force or organization for the protection of the district ; and
it was thought that, in case of future troubles, a body of
volunteer cavalry would be of very real service. The
manager of the Durbhungah estate, Furbelowe, was our
colonel ; Colville and Melville and another planter, Wil-
liams, were commissioned officers ; and myself and three
or four others were corporals.

About a hundred names were on the roll altogether ;
but I don't think that on this or any other occasion, as
long as I remained in Tirhoot , we mustered fifty. The
whole thing, indeed, was rather a bore ; but we all went in
for it from a sense of duty. Melville was really the mov-
ing spirit ; and I believe that, next to him, I knew my drill
better than anybody. Furbelowe was proud of the honour
of being Colonel, but knew nothing, and could not ride at
any pace beyond a walk. He was useful, however, in
giving big entertainments at Secundrapore. Sometimes
amusing things occurred, as on one occasion one of our
corporals, in the course of a charge on the plain by the
Cutcherries, was seen gradually to emerge from the ranks
and finally disappear at headlong speed down the bazaar,
drawn sword in hand. He did not return for more than
half an hour.

Another time, we carried on our charge farther than
usual, and spread a panic among a crowd of natives look-

Volunteer Cavalry. 215

ing on. Many of them were well-to-do people, enveloped
in rich shawls, who had probably never gone out of a walk
in their lives. As we neared them I saw them interchang-
ing looks of doubt and apprehension ; and then came a
helter-skelter rush, men tumbling over each other, and
heaps of abandoned shoes lying on the ground. Some
fled for protection into Percival's Court close by, where he
was holding sessions, and begged for mercy and protection.
The salient point in our uniform was a rather handsome
helmet, with a long crimson plume, made up with a view
of striking terror into an enemy ; and we were pleased to
find we had such an awful appearance on this occasion.

When I returned to Durbhungah I found that Davison
had acted very thoroughly up to his word, for he had
literally done nothing. The order on almost everything
was, " Let this be brought up when Mr. Gordon returns."
The result was, that I was obliged to work very hard for
some time to bring up the arrears. To add to my re-
sponsibilities, Government had just decided that all rent
suits under Act X. of 1859 should be tried in the Col-
lectors' Courts, and not in those of the moonsiffs. The
moonsiffs were the local Civil Courts dotted about the dis-
trict, and under the supervision of the judge on the Civil
side, to whom their decisions were appealable. The next
grade above them were the sudder ameers, stationed
at head quarters, to whom the civil case work, including
appeals from the moonsiffs, was distributed by the judge,
who could keep on his own file such cases as he chose and
had leisure for, his own time being chiefly occupied with
criminal appeals and sessions.

216 Life in the Mofussil.

Before I had taken over charge, all rent suits in the
Durbhungah subdivision had been instituted in the Court
of the Moonsiff of Durbhungah and disposed of by him.
Then orders had come that the institutions should be
made in my Court, and that I might hand half of them
over to him for disposal ; and now the rule was that I was
to keep the whole on my own file. This made a very
great difference in the amount of work I had to get
through ; for the Act had given rise to a great deal of liti-
gation between landlord and tenant, and there were gene-
rally some hundred institutions monthly. Some of these
were very complicated cases and took up a lot of time ;
but many were compromised, so that, very fortunately for
me, I did not have to adjudicate on the whole.

In my absence Jugdeo had been sowing the good seed,
and awakening the minds of the richer residents to the fact
that the hakim thought that the dirt of Durbhungah
was disgraceful, and that if money were forthcoming, im-
provements which would conduce very much to their com-
fort could be made. I was so occupied that it was some
time before I had leisure to summon a meeting. But at
length an afternoon was fixed, and all the chairs and forms
I could muster were placed in two parallel lines in the
principal verandah of the dak bungalow. Jugdeo had
written the most flowery letters to the rich commercial
residents, inviting them to attend, and he and the nazir
had had long consultations as to the order of their sitting ;
for any mistake in the matter of precedence might have
caused the whole thing to collapse at once.

For myself a chair and table had been placed at one

A Public Meeting. 2 1 7

end, and when they were all assembled, I entered the
verandah. They all stood up to receive me, and did not
sit until I sat down myself and asked them to do the
same. On my right I observed two rich and rival mer-
chants and bankers, named Bunwarree Lall and Nokee Lall.
On the left was another man, who was on good terms
with everybody, called Dabee Persad. Next to him was a
Mohammedan — Wahid Ali Khan, an energetic, pushing
person, anxious to become of importance, but not rich.
The others were people of somewhat similar station, but of
less wealth ; and after them came the agents of those who
could not or did not care to attend themselves, and some
of my own clerks.

I had prepared a little speech in the most high-flown
Hindustani I could muster; but when I stood up to
address the assembly, they all stood up too, which rather
embarrassed me, and I had some difficulty in making them
understand that I wished them to remain sitting. This
done, I commenced by saying, " I felt much gratification
and support in seeing this assemblage of so many noble, so
many wise, and so many rich men." They were not noble,
for the nobility and gentry had not been asked to attend,
as it would have involved a loss of " izzat " to do so in
company with the commercial classes. Neither were they
wise, nor all rich ; but I could see that this exordium was
pleasing.

I then went on to dilate on the very dirty state of the
town, and said that it was not creditable, and could not be
pleasing to the members of such an assemblage to live in
such a place, where there were no roads fit for a comfort-

218 Life in the Mofussil.

able vehicle, and where no man could keep his shoes on
in wet weather ; and I also dwelt on the meaning of the
name Durbhungah, which is supposed to be " Door of
Bengal," and said that the townsmen of a place holding
such a position ought to be zealous for its honour and
good repute. Then came the question of funds. The
amount of surplus chowkedaree tax standing to the credit
of the town was very small ; but if properly supplemented
by subscriptions, Government would no doubt aid us, and
I therefore proposed to open a subscription list at once,
and would ask each gentleman present to state what he
was willing to give.

Then out spake Bunwarree Lall, and said he would give
ioo rupees, upon which Nokee Lall said he would give
no rupees, and Bunwarree Lall bid 150 rupees ; and so it
went on like an auction, each wishing to appear more
liberal than the other, until they settled to give 350 rupees
each. Dabee Persad gave 250 rupees, and the others each
something, though smaller sums. On the whole, about
2,000 rupees, or ,£200, was promised, which result I con-
sidered rather successful.

I then wrote letters to the neighbouring nobility, inform-
ing them of what had been done, and telling them that I
had not invited them to be present at the meeting, as I
could not expect them to sit with these people of the com-
mercial caste, and I now asked them to subscribe to the
good object. They were no doubt flattered at the dis-
tinction thus drawn, and promised altogether another
1,500 rupees, or ^"150. After this, I sent a report to
Government, through Blake, dwelling on the desire of the

Iszat. 2 1 9

Durbhungah people to help themselves ; and in due time
came a reply, saying that Government was much pleased,
and would contribute to the improvement of the town a
sum equal to that subscribed by the residents. There was
also a sum of about 1,700 rupees {£170) to the credit of
the town in the Mozufferpore Treasury, the result of the
accumulation of many years' surplus, which nobody before
had ever thought, of spending ; so that altogether we had
between ^"700 and .£800 to spend.

It sounds a very small sum to English ears, but was
considerable in comparison with the tiny amounts we
generally managed to get for local expenditure. A com-
mittee was selected, of which I was president, and Dabee
Persad, Wahid Ali Khan, and Bunwarree Lall, and one or
two others, members. There was some little delay in
collecting the amount promised, many of the subscribers
being much more ready to promise than to pay.

Among others, Nokee Lall made sundry excuses for not
paying up ; and finally offered a less sum than he had
promised. He was no doubt jealous of Bunwarree Lall
being on the committee ; and he also repented being led
away by his excitement to promise so much at the meet-
ing. He was a man of a sullen and quarrelsome tempera-
ment, and it would have been difficult to get him to act in
harmony with the others. However, it would not do to let
him set an example of not paying ; so I thought the best
plan would be to shame him into it. Accordingly I let it
be known that I intended to pay him a visit on a certain
afternoon after office ; and on riding down on the day
appointed, I found a considerable crowd of curious spec-

220 Life in the Mofussil.

tators assembled in the main thoroughfare of the bazaar,
on which his house fronted. I sent a chuprassie in to
announce my presence, and I sat on horseback outside till
he came and stood in his doorway. Then I said, "What
is this that I hear, that you refuse to pay the subscription
you have promised?"

" Nourishcr of the poor," he replied, " I was foolish that
day, and I am a poor man. I cannot afford to give that
sum ; but I offer 150 rupees, if you will take it ;" and he
stretched out a bag he had in his hand.

"It is not good not to keep promises," I said. But he
only repeated what he said before. " Very well," I replied,
" each man has given according to his izzat, and you, I
suppose, are doing the same as the rest. I do not wish
that any man should give against his will. Bunwarree
Lall, according to his izzat, has given willingly 350 rupees.
Dabee Persad has given 250 rupees. You appear to con-
sider that yours is worth less. But here are a number of
your fellow-townsmen present, and they will know at what
you rate your izzat, according to the sum you give."

This made him hesitate ; he looked at the crowd, who
were listening with great interest, and then at me ; then
went into his house, and returned with a larger bag,
which he said contained the amount he had promised.
My chuprassie took it, and it was counted, and found to
contain 350 rupees. I then thanked him, and com-
plimented him on his liberality, and took my departure.
This had a very good effect, and Jugdeo told me that it
was the universal topic of conversation in the town ; and
other lagging contributors hastened to pay up.

Municipal Improvements. 221

The amount of work done with this money was really
wonderful, and mostly due to the energy and careful
supervision of Wahid Ali Khan. He knew prices of
materials and labour exactly, and there were no con-
tractors to make profits. The main thoroughfares were
metalled, and provided with masonry drains ; they were
also widened. Many salient corners of verandahs, and
projecting portions of houses being cut down, the owners
in most cases being persuaded to allow it to be done
without demand for compensation, and any poor people
affected receiving small sums. These were all really
encroachments on the public thoroughfare, but had been
so long in existence that a right to preserve them had
been established.

However, I employed most of my leisure in the bazaar,
and, by judicious use of "moral influence," overcame the
majority of the obstructions without expense. In some
cases, too, I was compelled to be severe, and fine people
for being a nuisance to their neighbours, under Section 290
of the Penal Code. The fines were, by law, credited to
Government in the Judicial Department, so the town got
no primary benefit from these. But the spirit of improve-
ment had taken a start. One evening I rather lost my
way at the southern end of the town, and came out upon
two really beautiful artificial lakes, each a mile or more in
circumference, which had been excavated many hundred
years before by an old rajah of the neighbourhood. The
earth thrown out from the excavations formed a sort of
small range of hills, that prettily broke the monotony of
the flat surface all round, and trees had grown upon the

222 Life in the Mofussil.

slopes, among which many small monkeys disported them-
selves, and enlivened the scene.

It occurred to me that at very little expense a beautiful
drive could be made round these ; and the next day I took
my committee there, who, either from a real impression or
a desire to please me, all said it was " a very elegant
place" (lutf). Negotiations were entered into with the
present owners of the land, who behaved in a most liberal
way : gave, free of charge, all the land required for the
roadway, permitted any trees to be cut down that offered
any obstruction, and allowed me to take for timber,
for the construction of the one or two bridges necessary,
any of the trees that I could make useful. Wahid Ali
Khan showed great energy here also, and in about two
months this drive was completed, named after me, and is,
I believe, still in good repair.

In about six months I had the satisfaction of seeing
Durbhungah quite a different place with reference to road-
ways and cleanliness, though of course there was still only
too much room for improvement ; but without money, more
could not be done.

The planters who came in used to compliment me on
what had been effected ; and a rich native banker from
Mozufferpore was loud in praise of the improvements.
He was named Nundiput, and had received the title of
Bahadur for services rendered during the Mutiny. He
had a branch business at Durbhungah, and was now build-
ing a house there for the use of his agent, a respectable
man, who had been selected as one of the members of our
committee.

Want of a House an Inconvenience. 223

About this time a sort of sub-meeting of volunteers
was held at Durbhungah, Furbelowe came over, and natu-
rally the dak Bungalow was crowded. The sanctity of my
bedroom was respected, which was very considerate on the
part of the visitors, as they had a right to turn me out
altogether if they chose. In a warm climate like India
a room at night is not absolutely necessary for sleeping
purposes, and some ten planters had beds in the verandah.
One night there was heavy rain, and some foolish practical
jokers had thrown the beds of two of their number out
into the wet. They came into my room and preferred a
complaint to me as Magistrate. This was very awkward,
but I told them that any complaint must be brought be-
fore me in Court the next day ; and in the morning I per-
suaded all parties, — not a very difficult thing, — to settle
the matter among themselves. But this and one or two
other little occurrences made me feel how awkward it was
for me to be subjected to this sort of thing, and to be
obliged to depend on the consideration of bond fide travel-
lers for not being turned out, so I determined to make
Nundiput rent me his house above mentioned, when
finished.

Government, in the meantime, had issued orders for the
building of a sub-divisional residence and Court at Durb-
hungah, and I had to take action under Act VI. of 1857,
(the Expropriation Act), in order to acquire land for the
purpose. This gave me infinite trouble ; for though I
managed to settle the matter without dispute, and satisfy
the owners of the land, the drawing up of the report in the
form required by the very elaborate rules of the Board of

224 Life in the Mofussil.

Revenue was a most difficult task. The fact is, I had dealt
with the matter from the paternal government and moral
influence point of view, and found it very difficult to make
my somewhat irregular proceedings fit into the cut-and-
dried red tape form required.

A new Collector had come to Tirhoot, Blake having been
appointed to a post in Calcutta which he had long coveted,
and at first he was inclined to quash all my proceedings,
and this would have involved my taking back money
already paid for houses, or rather huts, that had actually
been removed. But on understanding my difficulties he
did his best to pull me through, and at last the matter was
settled ; though, in order to do this, I was compelled to have
all the parties before me again and formally commence
de novo. The villagers were much puzzled ; but being
ignorant and as credulous as Frenchmen about les forma-
litcs, they were not troublesome.

Jugdeo was pleased at my embarrassment, as, the reports
being all done in English, he had no connection with them,
and it made it appear that I wasn't yet able to " walk well
alone." The sub-divisional residence was to be constructed
by the Public Works Department, which was always dilatory
in its action, and so was not completed until I left Dur-
bhungah. A circumstance occurred soon after this which
made the construction of a Court a serious necessity.

The rains were very heavy this year; and one day, when
my Court was most crowded, and there had been a week's
heavy downpour almost without cessation, there came a
roar and a crash of falling masonry which made every one
think that the whole building was coming down. I was

An Accident at Court.

22:

sitting with my back to the window, on the side from
which the noise appeared to come. The whole Court was
cleared in a twinkling. I was out last, not from any feeling
of dignity, but because it was physically impossible for me
to get out sooner ; and I shall never forget the horrible
disgusting feeling I had, that I was about to die like a rat
in a hole.

Clerks, suitors in civil cases, prosecutors, accused, and
police were all huddled pellmell over each other ; and it
took a few minutes to ascertain that none of us on this side
of the building had received any injury. We then went
round to the other side, and found that all the crash had
been caused by the fall of a portion of the masonry balus-
trade of the roof above mentioned. It had come down on
the sloping thatched roof of the verandah, breaking this in,
and also forcing outwards, two of the masonry pillars
supporting it. Here we found three unfortunate persons
injured. One was lying with a mass of masonry on his
chest, another with his right leg knocked almost off, — it was
hanging by a bit of skin only, — and a third inside the
verandah shouting and groaning as if in great pain. We
turned our attention first to him, for it looked as if the
whole bamboo roof had fallen on the top of him. How-
ever, it appeared that one of his feet had been caught
between two projecting pieces of bamboo, forming a por-
tion of that side of the roof which had fallen to the floor of
the verandah, the other side still resting against the pillars
which had not been broken. By cutting one of these
prongs he was able to extricate his foot ; and then it was
discovered he had not a scratch.

VOL. I. Q

2 26 Life in the MofussiL

In the meantime some others had taken the mass of
broken masonry off the chest of the other man ; but he lay
unable to move. Furbelowe, who lived in a bit of the
palace close by, had now come on the scene, imagining
from the noise that I must have been killed, and with him
the Sub-assistant Surgeon, or native medical officer in charge
of the charitable dispensary which he had established with
the funds of the estate. He looked at the man with the
injured chest, said his case was serious, and he could not
recover ; and then at the man with the broken leg, and said
it was merely a question of the loss of a leg.

Having no instruments at hand, a carving-knife was sent
for from Furbelowe's, and the leg taken off by simply
cutting the small piece of skin by which it was hanging.
But the unfortunate man fell back in a fainting state, never
recovered consciousness, and died that evening. The
shock had been too much for his system. It turned out,
poor man, that he was a tailor, and had come to demand
payment of a small but- long-standing debt from one of
my clerks, and was waiting for an opportunity of seeing
him in the verandah when this crash occurred.

The other man was taken to the hospital attached to the
dispensary ; but after two or three days his friends came
and stole him away by night ; and this perhaps ensured his
recovery, for on making inquiries afterwards, I heard that
he had got quite well.

It is a curious fact, that the natives have such a dislike
to allowing their relatives to go to hospital, and seldom
bring them there voluntarily until it is too late to do any-
thing for them. They fear loss of caste, which is worse

Native Dislike to our Hospitals. 227

than loss of life. Generally, too, I found them utterly un-
grateful ; and innumerable instances occurred, where, after
being tended with care and their strength restored, patients
ran away before their cases were considered complete, and
took with them the blankets and any other portable hospital
property that had been given to them for use. I can safely
say, however, that this, though somewhat disheartening,
made none of us, either Magistrates or Doctors, relax our
efforts to induce the people to come to our hospitals and
learn to appreciate the benefits of civilized medical treat-
ment. We are doubtless slowly succeeding, and should
have made more rapid progress could we have afforded the
services of more European medical officers ; but I fear the
natives had frequently reason to doubt both the skill and
tenderness of the Sub-assistant Surgeons, and native doctors.
I seldom found instances of these men having any real
sympathy with suffering, but generally a total absence
of it.

I considered it dangerous to use the Court building
again until it had been examined by a competent person ;
and this Furbelowe promised to have done as soon as
possible. In the meantime, there being no other place
available, and tents not being possible in such weather, I
was obliged to hold my Court in the verandah of the dak
bungalow. It is scarcely necessary to say that this was
very uncomfortable and ill-adapted for the purpose ; but it
is only one among many instances where the representa-
tives of Government in India have been put to such un-
dignified shifts.

But nevertheless, the people seemed to think nothing of

228 Life in the Mofussil

it ; and after all it was not so much inconvenience to
them as the fact of my not being vested with the " full
powers " of a Magistrate. E.g., under the existing law,
which has since been altered, I had not power to adjudi-
cate on a charge of "theft in a building;" but I could either
commit the accused to the Court of Session or refer the
case to the Magistrate of the district for orders. When the
property stolen was of very small value, it was a great
hardship on the prosecutor and his witnesses to be com-
pelled to go seventy miles into Mozufferpore and back, and
cross fourteen streams going and coming, at each of which
they would have to pay toll. Such cases frequently oc-
curred, and were all brought under the notice of Melville,
to whom they were referred by Blake, or his successor Ellis,
for disposal.

At length I was obliged to refer one in which the value
of the property was only 4^d. ; whereupon Melville was
moved to compassion and wrote to Ellis, pointing out the
hardships to which the Durbhungah people were subjected
in consequence of my limited powers; and also that it
was a mere question of routine, as I had passed all my
legal examination, and was only prevented from being
invested with full powers by my liability to a further
examination in Bengali. Both Ellis and Percival, to whom
my administration was referred for an opinion, reported
me fit for full powers, and Government therefore invested
me with them, but without allowing me to draw the
extra £60 a year until I should pass my examination
in Bengali.

The receipt of this news caused some sensation in

Invested ivith Fzdl Powers. 229

Durbhungah native society, and I had to undergo con-
gratulatory visits from all the native gentlemen of my
acquaintance. Among others, came Rajah Ganeshur
Singh, brother of the late Rajah of Durbhungah. He
had hoped to have the management of the estate after
his brother's death; and, when Blake had taken steps
to have it brought under the Court of Wards, had
united with the Ranee, the widow, to use all efforts in
their power to prevent it ; and had presented numerous
petitions to the Government, accusing Blake of every
enormity under the sun. When, however, he found that
he could not succeed, and that the Government had
finally decided to place the estates under the Court of
Wards, he asked leave to call on Blake, and humbled
himself, saying that he had been mad, and now hoped
to be forgiven. Blake of course forgave him, and I have
no doubt had not the slightest personal feeling against
him.

Judging from my own experiences afterwards in similar
cases, I think I may assert that we civilians showed what
may be called a high-minded contempt for the spite
and venom showered upon us by those whose personal
wishes or interests we were opposing, for their own or
the public good.

Ganeshur Singh was now a good boy, and quite willing
to admit, — as indeed he could not help doing, — that the
management of the Court of Wards had been both
considerate and efficient. No caste prejudices had been
violated, the two sons of the Rajah were being educated
in an enlightened manner, but without any attempt to

230 Life in tlic Mqfussil.

touch upon religious matters; great improvements had
been made in the estate and the buildings ; all just
debts had been paid ; all fraudulent claims had been
contested, and generally successfully, in the local Courts ;
finally, the income was now a clear £120,000 a year,
whereas, had the old Rajah lived two years longer, the
estate must have been brought to auction for non-pay-
ment of arrears of Government revenue.

Ganeshur Singh's own estate was by no means in so
flourishing a condition, and he was now anxious to have
it also managed by the Court of Wards ; but this of
course could not be allowed, as the Government did
not take upon itself to rescue from ruin all estates of
which the proprietors were extravagant or foolish ; but
merely, as the law on the subject, Reg. x. of 1793 recites,
in cases of minors, females (with exceptions), idiots,
lunatics, etc., and then only after very careful and com-
plete inquiry.

On this occasion Ganeshur had just returned from his
first railway journey from Barh to Patna, the line having
been recently opened ; and I was anxious to get at his
impressions, as a native gentleman of high family, on
the subject. In reply to my first question on the subject,
he said, "It makes a great noise.'" This was discouraging,
and I found that he apparently had not taken in any
impression of the magnitude of the undertaking or of
the great speed attained, and the wonderful difference
in the facility of locomotion. His chief idea seemed
to be, that it would be very difficult for persons of his
high caste to travel at all by such means.

A High-caste Nobleman. 231

" For instance/' he said, " the trains only go at stated
times ; now I cannot commence a journey except at the
minute decided upon by my astrologer as a favourable
moment for starting. This makes it very difficult for
me to travel at all. To-morrow I have to go to Mozuf-
ferpore, and the astrologer has decided that I must
start at 1 a.m.

"Now my cousin Gadadhur went by railway the other
day with his wife, and daughter of six years old, and a
baby. He started at an unfavourable moment. His wife
and two children and a maid-servant were put in a palan-
quin, which was placed on a truck, which prevented
their being seen ; and he went in an ordinary carriage.
Somehow or other, a spark from the engine flew into
the palanquin, and set fire to some of the linen in which
the baby was wrapped ; and the servant, in her confusion,
thinking it was only a bundle of clothes, threw it out. The
moment it was done she found out the mistake, and
they all shrieked. This was only a mile from the Patna
station, and the train soon stopped. The station master
was very kind, and did his best ; but the palanquin was
on fire, and the wife in getting out was seen by many
persons. It is not a fit subject even for conversation."

"But what about the baby?" I asked.

" They sent back along the line, and found it still
alive ; but it died soon afterwards."

It was evident that he thought much more of the
wife being seen, than of the death of the child ; but
this was the result of his training, and that of his an-
cestors for generations, so I could not blame him for it.

232 Life in the Mofussil.

On going out, he had to pass through my dining
room, where the cloth was laid and some knives and
forks on the table. " What arc those for ?" he asked.
I explained their use, and hoped to make him under-
stand this small item of Western civilization. " Ah," he
remarked, " my caste does not allow me to eat with
anything but my fingers." He was proud, rather than
impatient, of his caste restraints.

Poor man ! he started the next night in torrents of
rain, at the favourable hour mentioned by his astrologer,
no doubt believing, as members of other religions do
under analogous circumstances, that it was " all for the
best."

After a few days, the Court building having been pro-
nounced not dangerous, I returned to work there. I had
hardly been back two days when a thunderstorm came on
which seemed to be exactly over us, the lightning and
thunder being simultaneous. There was a crowd of people
about the Cutcherry ; and suddenly a murmur arose that
a man had been struck. I went out to look, and found a
man lying dead. He was a rustic, and had no clothing but
a waistcloth (dhotee). So there was very little linen to
burn ; but I examined the corpse for some time before I
could find any trace of the stroke. At last I discovered
a small piece of singed hair a little on one side of the
head. This was evidently the point of entry of the electric
fluid, but I could not see any trace of its exit.

The police officer came soon after to hold the inquest,
for this is the way these things are done in the Mofussil.
In all cases of unnatural death, the police officer holds an

A Death by Lightning. 233

inquiry and sends in a report to the Magistrate having
jurisdiction, who then passes orders for further investigation
or merely for the papers to be filed with the records,
as may appear proper. This case illustrated the delay
that was brought about through police red-tapeism. As
there was no Assistant Superintendent of police at Durb-
hungah, the formal report had to be sent in to the District
Superintendent at Mozufferpore, and from him back
again to the Court Inspector, or police officer attached
to my Court. Thus, after the lapse of a week, I received
the report, stating how the man had been killed, and that
his highness Gordon Sahib, the " Ashistant " Magistrate
of Durbhungah, had brought the splendour of the day
to the spot, and seen the corpse with his own blessed
eyes.

CHAPTER VIII.

A T DURBHUNGAIL

Nl'N'DIPUT'S HOUSE. — AN ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT OF POLICE. —
SYSTEM OF EXCISE. — FINAL EXAMINATION. — RIOT CASES. — INDIGO
SOWING CASE. — INDIGO PLANTERS. — JUGDEO SUSPECT. — NE-
PAULESE CASE.— A TIGER PARTY. — A NARROW ESCAPE. — NEW
MUNICIPAL ACT. — BUNWARREE LALL AND PUBLIC WORKS DE-
PARTMENT.— APPOINTED TO NUDDEA. — REGRET AT MY DEPAR-
TURE.— AGRICULTURAL SHOW. — GOOD-BYE TO DURBHUNGAH.

NOT long after this, Nundiput's house was finished ;
and with some pressure he consented to let me occupy
it. I had to fix my own rent (a matter of very little
importance to him) and the amount of my own chowke-
darree, or municipal tax, which I assessed at the maxi-
mum. The rent I fixed at what I thought a fair
amount, as he had declined to take anything. The
house was tolerably clear of the Bazaar and with a fair
garden at the back. It consisted of three narrow oblong
rooms running north and south, two very small rooms,
more like closets, at each corner, and two somewhat
larger filling the space between the corners. At the
back was a small square courtyard surrounded by small
rooms intended for the zenana, or women's apartments.
There was a short verandah on three sides, the roof was
supported by masonry pillars ; the walls were thick enough
for those of a fortress, and tended to keep the interior

An Assistant Superintendent. 235

cool in the very hot weather. On the whole, it was not
very suitable for a European's residence, but was better than
anything else I could get in Durbhungah. The servants'
houses and cookhouse were in separate small buildings
outside.

I had scarcely got settled when I received information
of the appointment to Durbhungah of an Assistant Super-
intendent of Police ; and on his arrival I sent to ask him to
put up with me, looking forward with some pleasure on
my own account to the company of a white face, and not
wishing him to be subjected to the same inconveniences as
I had undergone myself at the dak bungalow.

His name was Cookson, and he had been, he told me, in
some Highland regiment, but had sold out on his mar-
riage ; and as his father had been in the Indian service had
come out to get employment in this country. It was clear
enough from his appearance that his mother had been in
India too. His wife he had left in Calcutta ; but she was
to follow with her baby when he got settled. On the
whole, he was scarcely up to what I could have wished,
and by no means gave me the idea of being likely
to exercise a vigorous control over the police. But we
got on amicably enough, and it was a great comfort to
get work done more quickly than in the former circuitous
manner. We scarcely met on week-days, except at break-
fast time and at dinner, so that we had not much leisure
for becoming quarrelsome ; at least I had not, for my work-
was now very hard.

The new Registration Act had now passed, which
enacted that every party executing a deed must appear in

236 Life in the Mofussil.

person and be properly identified before the Registrar, or
must be represented by a mookhtyar furnished with a
registered power of attorney, to give which the principal
must have appeared in person once before the Registrar.
Documents so registered were to be received in all the
Courts without dispute as legally registered ; and this
obviated a great amount of litigation about their authen-
ticity, and was an immense improvement on the old
system.

The Commissioners and Collectors, having been con-
sulted, had replied that the subdivisional officers could find
time to perform the functions of Sub-registrars, but that
they ought to receive some small addition to their pay
for the extra work, say £5 a month. Government, as was
understood at the time, acceded to this, and in the months
of August and September I registered an average of more
than 500 deeds per month. This took up a certain amount
of time, and involved the keeping up of a number of new
and rather elaborate registers, so that there was really a
considerable addition to my work. I consoled myself by
drawing my extra 50 rs. ; but at the end of the. two months
Government issued a circular stating that they had never
authorized this, that it was a misapprehension on the part
of the Commissioners, and that all money so drawn must
be refunded to the Treasury.

This was thought rather sharp practice by us disap-
pointed ones, for it appeared that the Government had
first induced us by promise of extra remuneration to admit
that we could do the extra work, and when it found the
work was being done had withdrawn the pay. I never

System of Excise.

*j/

quite understood how the blame was to be distributed in
the matter, but I did not much care, as my present income
was quite sufficient for my present wants.

This was the time too when attention was turned to the
development of subdivisional administration, and it was
resolved that subdivisional officers should be entrusted
with the control of the excise within the limits of their
jurisdictions — of course under the supervision of the Dis-
trict Collector.

The object of the system of excise, as stated by the
Government, is " to raise as large an amount of revenue
from the sale of intoxicating liquors and drugs as is com-
patible with the greatest possible discouragement of their
use. It always appeared to me that the great object of
the Government was to get a maximum consumption
at a maximum rate. In Tirhoot, hitherto, the excise had
been under a Deputy-Collector of the uncovenanted ser-
vice at head-quarters, for most Collectors looked upon
this as appertaining to the class of " dirty work," and were
glad to get rid of its disagreeable details.

There had been a controversy going on as to the respec-
tive merits of the " monthly tax " system, and the " fixed
duty" system. Under the former, monthly licences were
granted to distillers and retailers at fixed rates ; and they
could manufacture and sell as much as they pleased.
Under the latter, a duty was charged on the actual amount
manufactured and sold, and rates also varied with the
strength of the spirit. Under this system "public distil-
leries " were established, as tending to give the authorities
greater control.

238 Life in the Mofussil.

These were erected at the Government expense, and
licensed distillers set up stills therein. Within a certain
fixed radius round these, no private stills could be set up,
and all retail shops were compelled to get their supplies
therefrom. They were under the charge of an officer
called a Darogah, whose business it was to tax the amount
passed out and to test its strength ; also to prevent illicit
manufacture, and to look after the licensed shopkeepers
who took their spirits from the distillery. These were used
of course for the distillation of country spirit only. Im-
ported spirits were treated in a different way.

I don't know who drew up the scheme for the erection
of these distilleries in the Durbhungah subdivision ; but he
had apparently drawn a number of circles on the map, with-
out any consideration of the circumstances of each locality,
and said, " There shall be a distillery in the centre of each
of the circles." The result was, that at this time came the
order that eleven of these distilleries should be erected ;
and as there was no necessity to ask for the assistance of
the Public Works Department, their construction was
speedily carried out. Theoretically, the buildings should
have been of masonry, and surrounded by a masonry wall.
But in Bengal, though the richest province in India, we
are seldom allowed any money to do anything on a proper
scale ; and so the erections were mud walls with tiled
roofs, and surrounded by a palisade.

The theory of Government was, that where no legally
manufactured spirits were consumed, there must be illicit
manufacture. This I firmly believe to be a mistake in the
greater part of Bengal known to me. In this subdivision

Drunkenness. 239

complaints used to reach me now of drunkenness where it
was unknown before. Monthly returns from all the distil-
leries had to be sent by way of my office to head-quarters
in Mozufferpore, and as (I am happy to say) many of them
did not pay their expenses, I was constantly harassed to
report reasons for their not doing so. The simple reason
was, that they were not required in their neighbourhood ;
which answer, however, my superiors declined for some
time to receive as conclusive. Finally, however, some
three or four of them were abolished.

It was my duty to visit these distilleries as often as
opportunity occurred, and to examine the Darogah's ac-
counts, test the quantity of the spirits in store, and also
its strength with the hydrometer. All this was very dis-
agreeable. The buildings were make-shift and dirty ; the
smell was abominable, and the very nature of their duties
seemed to have a demoralizing effect on the Darogah and
his subordinates.

I also had to keep an opium shop at my treasury, and
sell the drug, — supplied to me from head-quarters, — to the
licensed vendors, who generally united this trade with the
sale of stamps. Dealing with this, however, was better
than with country spirits.

But the most harmful drug is " ganja," a preparation of
hemp. The use, or rather abuse, of this did not come
much under my notice until I was transferred to Eastern
Bengal, so I will not remark upon it here.

Apropos of the above, I may relate, that I was one day
driving through the town in my buggy with Cookson when
we came upon a drunken chowkcydar (policeman). In this

240 Life in the Mofussil.

drunken state he did not perceive who I was, and, irri-
tated at being ordered to get out of the way, he struck at
me with his latti (bamboo stick). So I pulled up, got out,
and tackled him. He was too drunk to be a formidable
opponent ; but it was unseemly for me to be seen strug-
gling with him, so I called out, " Will no one come to assist
the hakim ? " Two or three men came rushing up, in the
twinkling of an eye undid his turban, bound his arms with
it, and at my orders led him away to the police station.
Cookson all this time did nothing ; but I suppose he
thought it best to keep hold of the reins. The news of
this event spread rapidly through the town, and the next
morning the crowd at my Court, to see me sit in judgment
on the man who had assaulted me, was very great. I be-
lieve the uninitiated thought in a vague kind of way that
nothing short of the extreme penalty of the law would
be considered sufficient punishment. Among others, his
mother was there, and flung herself down before me
in an agony of supplication. The wretched man was so
frightened that he could scarcely speak. However, he
admitted he had been drunk, and said he did not know
what he was doing. I read him a lecture on the disgrace
attaching to him as a guardian of the public peace and
fined him eight annas, equal to one shilling, saying, that
no doubt the Police Superintendent would dismiss him.
He was so relieved at finding nothing worse was to hap-
pen to him, that I am afraid the sentence had very little
effect on him. I may add here, as a somewhat curious
fact, that natives, when accused of being drunk, always
admitted the fact.

Fully passed at Last. 24.1

My work now was very hard, and I could only keep
pace with it by working double tides, that is, by holding-
Court twice a day. I would commence in the morning at
6.30 a.m., first do the registration work, hear the various
police reports, and try the criminal cases, which would
occupy me till 12. Then return to my house to bath and
breakfast, be back in office at 1.30, and work away at
batwarras, excise, and rent suits, till 6 or 6.30; so that
by the end of the day I was pretty well done up, and had
very little time for outdoor investigations. In the midst
of all this, I was supposed to be preparing for my exam-
ination in Bengali, not a word of which was spoken in the
district.

At length the time arrived, and Davidson once more
came to act for me. A rule had been promulgated that
the examination of two Commissioners' divisions should be
taken together, at the head-quarters of each alternately;
so on this occasion I had to go all the way to Bhaugul-
pore, four days' hard travelling there and back, in order to
undergo one day's examination. But travelling expenses
were allowed by Government, and I felt more like a
schoolboy going out for a holiday, than a hard-worked
administrator going up for examination. It is not neces-
sary to go into detail about this journey ; but it will suffice-
to say that I did very badly, but was allowed to pass in
consideration of the small opportunity I had had for study ;
and I enjoyed the society of white faces there very much.
My pay was now increased to 500 rupees a month, or
£600 a year.

It was late in November when I returned, and I

VOL. I. R

2.\2 Life in the MofussiL

found that a serious case had occurred in my absence,
which Davidson had abstained from touching in anticipa-
tion of my return, though it had required prompt action.
Two indigo planters, Arkell and Ball, had visited a village
which had been leased to them, with a view to collecting
rents in arrears, and had been seriously assaulted ; and
further, their tent, pitched in the neighbourhood, had been
destroyed, their tent furniture broken or carried off, and
the provisions they had brought with them thrown into a
stream in the vicinity.

This really was a quarrel, not about the cultivation of
indigo, but about the payment of rent. The villagers were
known stubborn characters, who had given their own
native zemindar great trouble about their rent ; and he in
despair had leased the village to Arkell, who had at first
taken it with the view of getting indigo cultivated ; but
had at length given up the idea.

The term village includes, of course, the lands surround-
ing the habitations of the villagers, and cultivated by
them. On this occasion, after many fruitless missions of
subordinate employes, he had gone in person, with his
assistant, Ball, to endeavour to hold a friendly conference
with the villagers ; it having been suggested by one or
two of the more reasonable of them that he should do so.
Expecting to stay two or three days, they had sent their
tent to be pitched near ; and Ball had taken his gun with
him in the hope of sport. From their evidence, and that
of their grooms, it appeared they had ridden into the
village, and gone to the cutcherry, — the term used for the
office in every village where all the landlord's or lessee's

A Rent Riot Case. 243

business with the villagers is carried on, — and that almost
immediately they were surrounded, abused, and threat-
ened ; and finally assaulted, though not hurt seriously.
They both lost their hats, and got to their horses with
difficulty. I adjourned the case, to get independent evi-
dence if possible ; and as in the meantime it became
necessary for me to go to a distant town, called Rowsara,
to revise the assessments of the town-tax made by the
town council, I appointed my camp there as the place for
finally hearing the case, and directed the accused persons
to have all the evidence for their defence ready.

Arkell and Ball had some twenty-five miles to come to
my tent. There was no means of getting anything to eat
and drink, except with me, so I felt constrained to offer
them breakfast ; but this made me very careful to finish
the case, if possible, without going back to my tent at all.
The complainants' evidence was clear ; that for the de-
fence absurd. They admitted there was a quarrel about
the rent ; but said that the two sahibs had come into the
village cutcherry, and fired off the gun at the villagers,
inside the building. No one had been hit, and no one
could give any account of where the charge had struck,
or whether it was shot or ball. Further, Arkell and Ball
both swore that the gun had never been loaded at all ; and
their statement was reliable ; for though European planters
do condescend to allow false evidence to be given in cases
in which they are interested, they do not give false evi-
dence themselves.

The case took a long time, and at the end I had to
write my grounds of judgment, as well as pronounce sen-

244 Life in tJic Mofussil.

tcncc, which also was a long business, as I had to take
notice of all the evidence, which was very voluminous. I
just had daylight enough, sitting under a big mango tree,
to do it. There had clearly been a riot, and the two com-
plainants had been maltreated in attempting what they
had a legal right to do. The rioting made the matter
serious, so I gave the ringleaders nine months each, and
a fine of fifty rupees ; some others, lighter punishments.
The ink on my paper was scarcely dry, when both parties
filed petitions for copies. As I came tired into my tent, I
met Arkell just about to start on his dark ride home.

" I've often said that you civilians are overpaid," he
said ; " but I'll never say it again. I would not go through
the labour you have gone through to-day for .£5,000 a
year. I could no more have written my judgment sitting
there, all at once, as you did, than I could have jumped
over the moon."

"And now," I said, "tell me about your beard," which I
had observed very much thinner and shorter than I had
known it.

" Oh," he replied, " they pulled a lot of that out in the
row ; but my mookhtyar advised me to say nothing about
it, as it would so lower my status with the natives to make
it public in Court."

This showed that native public opinion was worth some-
thing in his eyes.

I had to make a separate case of the plunder of the tent,
for that was testified to by other witnesses. Davidson's
delay in taking action, had given them facilities for dis-
posing of the stolen property. At length the police found

Risks of a Committal. 245

a knife and fork in the house of a Mohammedan woman of
bad fame, and, following up the clue, found in two Moham-
medan houses, some seven or eight miles distant from the
spot, several pieces of canvas, tent-ropes, and other Euro-
pean articles ; and I was able to indict the householders as
" receivers." As this was a case of plunder, with violence,
by more than five persons, the case came under the tech-
nical definition of dacoity, and I was obliged to commit
it for trial to the Sessions Court, over which Percival
presided.

Now, in the first case, he had upheld my decision, when
an appeal was preferred to him ; but in this case, he
acquitted the accused, on what appeared to me very
unsatisfactory grounds. Section 125 of the Criminal Pro-
cedure Code enacts that the search of any house by the
police shall be conducted in the presence of two or more
respectable inhabitants of the place in which the house
searched is situate. The police officer in this case, know-
ing all the inhabitants of this village to be hostile to the
discovery of the truth, had conducted the search in the
presence of two persons from a neighbouring village.
This might have been of importance if the accused had
denied that the articles had been found in their houses, or
asserted that the police had put them there (as is often
done) ; but they admitted that they had been found there,
and said they had found some, and purchased some.
However, the Judge acquitted them on the ground of
the above technical informality.

This was matter for regret, as it tended to the triumph
of the wrong side ; but we Magistrates generally found

246 Life in the Mofussil.

that when we decided ourselves, our orders were very
seldom upset on appeal ; but that in cases committed for
trial to the Sessions Courts, it was just a toss up which
way they would go. In India there are many causes to
bring this about. It is so easy to get at witnesses between
the magisterial inquiry and the Sessions trial — at poor
men by bribes, at any of the better class by saying, " Why
should you condemn a poor man to prison or death by
your evidence ? You can so easily make a little discrepancy
before the Judge, and so on." This argument has an
extraordinary effect on witnesses who don't happen to
have any personal spite against the accused. In some
cases, I have known bribed witnesses deliberately deny
before the Sessions Judge facts to which they had deposed
before the Magistrate, and submit to be tried and punished
for perjury in consequence ; and I have ascertained after-
wards that the bribers persuaded them to do so, by
assuring them that the Judge would not give them more
than three years for perjury, and that in the meantime
their families would be well cared for. In the case just
mentioned, however, nothing of this sort occurred.

My revision of the assessment at Rowsara took me
some three days' morning and evening work, the middle
of the day being occupied by Court work, done under the
tree above mentioned. While there, a man came in with
a complaint that an European planter, whose factory was
near his village, had forcibly dispossessed him of a lot of
his land, and sown it with indigo. Under the existing
law, Sec. 318 of the Criminal Procedure Code, we Magis-
trates had powers, in case of such disputes, to confirm the

A Case of Dispossession. 247

party actually in possession, without reference to right or
title. We generally tried, however, to keep in possession
the party whose claim appeared the best, and so throw the
onus of proof in the Civil Court on the wrongful claimant.
This is analogous to the spirit of our procedure on the
Collectorate side, in the " dakhil kharij " cases mentioned
above ; but, as Magistrates, our chief object was to prevent
all chance of a riot.

The scene of this complaint was about fifteen miles from
my tent, so I determined to go there by night in a palki,
inspect the ground in the morning, and get back to my
tent by mid-day, in time for some Court work. It was
rather comfortless ; but I took some bread and a teapot
with me, and managed to get some hot water from the
village (with great difficulty), made my tea, and com-
menced my inspection about 6.30. The planter was there,
and pressed me to accept the hospitality of his bungalow
close by ; but under the circumstances I did not like to. I
told the complainant, Juggoo Tewarree, to point out the
plots of which he alleged himself to have been dis-
possessed, and he proceeded to point out every plot sown
with indigo, but in most of these, when they came to be
measured, his statements were found to be wrong ; in fact,
he bungled his case altogether, and I did not see that I
had any legal ground for ousting the planter from the land
he had already sown with indigo. However, I reserved
my decision, declining again to go to the planter's house,
as I thought I should have to decide in his favour, though
I felt certain that the villagers would not willingly have let
him have all the land.

24S Life in the Mofussil.

On reaching my tent I found news that Ellis was coming
out from Mozuffcrpore the next day but one, to inspect
me, that is, my office, work, etc., etc., so that I had to get
back to Durbhungah as quickly as possible. When Ellis
came I mentioned this case to him, and said I was afraid
to pass orders which might oppress an injured party. He
was a brusque-mannered man, with lots of energy, and
a good deal of impatience of any technicalities which
seemed to hamper justice.

"I'll take up the case myself," he said, "and decide it
while I'm here." He had power by law to transfer any
case from my file to his own. He went vigorously into
the matter, and managed to come to a decision ousting
the planter from a great deal of the land he had occupied.

I read his order, and I pointed out that the planter was
in possession ; that by the law that was all he had to look
to, and though it might be just, I did not understand his
decision to be legal.

"Never mind," he said, "justice first, and dovetail in the
law afterwards/'

The planter appealed to the High Court in Calcutta,
and Ellis's order was upset. The result was, that the un-
fortunate Juggoo had to go into the Civil Court to get
back his own, after having spent a lot of money in defend-
ing the appeal before the High Court. About a year after
this, as I was about to leave Tirhoot for good, I asked this
planter what the real truth was. " Simply," he said, " that
Juggoo had leased me a certain amount of land, and I had
taken a great deal more. Juggoo wanted to get not only
this back, but also some of that he had leased to me, and

Indigo in TirJwot. 249

so made those confused statements which puzzled you.
When we went into the Civil Court we made a compro-
mise which gave me a good deal the best of it." A trans-
action not creditable to either party, certainly not so to
the planter.

The cultivation of indigo is, beyond a doubt, unwelcome
to the native cultivator. In Lower Bengal the power of
the indigo planters had been broken up by the very strong
measures of the Lieutenant-Governor. In Tirhoot there
had been no general disturbance, but an increase of rate
had been conceded to the cultivators. The cultivation
of indigo in this part is of two kinds, that called the
"zeraat," or land cultivated by the planter with hired
labour, and that called " ryotwarree," cultivated by the
small peasant farmer. If the planter could get land
enough for his purpose to cultivate on the zeraat system,
there would be no objection to the thing ; but, in the first
place, it would be exceedingly difficult to do this, and in
the next place he does not wish it, as this system is so
much more expensive than the ryotwarree.

It is very seldom that a planter can get the ryots to
cultivate indigo for him, unless he is lessee of the village
from the zemindar, or landholder, or unless he happens
to be himself the proprietor ; for all the land is held by
these small peasant farmers, either by prescriptive right or
by lease. They object to cultivate indigo, as it is a very
troublesome and not a profitable crop. The land takes
a great deal of preparation, and there is a great deal of
weeding to be done. Further, he much prefers a food
crop ; and indigo comes into antagonism with all such in

250 Life in the Mofussil.

Behar, except rice. But the ryots are proverbially im-
provident, and find it difficult to resist the temptation of
a money advance from the planter, on consideration of
their contracting to grow a certain amount of indigo. At
the time I was there the rate was, I believe, 7 rs. a Tirhoot
beegah ; equal to about two-thirds of an English acre ; but
out of this the ryot had to pay the price of the indigo
seed supplied by the planter.

The advance once accepted, the ryot becomes liable to
much bullying until the crop is actually cut. The planter
keeps servants who go round to see that the land is pro-
perly prepared, and the crop kept weeded. These men,
knowing they have European influence at their back, are
often very oppressive, and by threatening to complain to
the planter or his head man, induce the ryots to bribe
them into friendship. Otherwise they would continually
be summoned in to the planter's cutcherry, and if they
refused to go, taken there by force, men called peons being
kept expressly for this purpose. But about indigo oppres-
sion I will speak further in my next chapter.

The profits from indigo in a good year in Behar were
very great. I have known a case where an outlay of
,£30,000 has brought in at the end of the year a return of
over £ 1 00,000. On the other hand, in a bad year, from
drought, rain at the wrong time, or the ravages of the
beetle, the result might be a considerable loss. The
planters, too, in times of distress were kind to the ryots ;
they were of great assistance in the construction of roads,
and, as a general rule, if the ryots behaved well about
the indigo, did not bother them much about their rent,

Planters. 2 5 r

which was really a secondary consideration. Some, how-
ever, more greedy for gain, would sublet the villages to
their own native headmen, and then the unfortunate ryots
had not only to grow indigo, but pay the uttermost
farthing extracted by the grasping native.

Planters, too, made the district much more pleasant for
the European official when moving about in camp ; but
the former was always obliged to be on his guard against
creating wrong impressions in the minds of the natives ;
and it was only in very few cases that friendship could be
free and unrestrained. One young planter said to me one
day, " What a lot of money we should make, if you fellows
were not here !" And no doubt the planters' impression
is that we act as very troublesome buffers. On the other
hand, the natives continually accuse us of partiality for
our European brethren ; so that, on the whole, we may,
perhaps, lay the flattering unction to our souls that we
administer tolerably even justice.

But there was an instance near Durbhungah of indigo
cultivation being carried on with good feeling on both
sides, and respect on the part of the native for the planter.
The latter was a Scotchman, of patriarchal aspect and
habits. He was thought wanting in enterprise by his
neighbours ; but though his profits were not colossal in
good years, his losses were small in bad, and everything
that the natives did for him was done willingly. He was
an Honorary Magistrate, a post equivalent to our J. P., and
though his decisions were not based on the strict rules
of evidence, they were, what is much better, substantially
just. They were seldom appealed against. Such a thing

252 Life in the Mofussil.

as a complaint against him or any of his servants never
occurred ; an official could accept his hospitality with a
perfectly secure mind, and I spent some happy days with
him.

Ellis pronounced himself satisfied with his inspection of
my office, the manner in which the work appeared to be
done and routine details attended to ; but, to my sorrow,
he didn't like Jugdeo.

" He wears too swell a puggree (turban)," he said, " and
makes himself of too much importance. You ought to
snub him publicly."

This annoyed me all the more that I felt there was
some truth in it. The man was really a good and clever
ministerial servant, and I did not like to snub him. All
this time I had only had to find fault with him on one oc-
casion, and that was so truly characteristic of the native
way of doing things, that it is worth mentioning.

Among the many criminal returns we had to forward
monthly to the District Magistrate, was a statement show-
ing the number of witnesses summoned, the number whose
evidence was recorded, and the number heard on the first,
second, third, fourth, or fifth day of attendance. This was
intended, of course, as a check on unnecessary delay in the
hearing of witnesses. On looking over my returns, after I
had been some three months at Durbhungah, I found
that all the witnesses examined had been entered as heard
on the first day of their attendance. I knew that this
could not be the fact, as it was impossible for me to com-
plete on each day all the cases coming in on that day. So
I asked Jugdeo, who prepared the return, what it meant.

A Roobekarree. 253

" I never enter the witnesses as present/' he said, " until
your highness is ready to take up the case. If I enter
them as having been three or four days in attendance, then
it is necessary to send an explanation to the Magistrate,
and the return does not look so thck " (a word expressing
all excellence).

Of course I put a stop to this ; but it is a type of the
way in which a native, to avoid a little present labour, will
roll up any amount of future trouble for himself.

Another thing now came to my mind that made me
think he must be looked after. A petition had been pre-
sented to me by the proprietors of a certain estate near
Durbhungah, that the neighbouring proprietor, who was
my landlord, Nundiput, was constructing a heavy embank-
ment on the border of the two estates, which would stop
the water way in the rainy season, and subject the whole
neighbourhood to the risk of an inundation. Nundiput
rejoined that he was making a road to connect a certain
place called Bhowareh with Durbhungah, and that it
would be a great public convenience. I went out to the
spot myself, and saw that the road would be a good thing,
but the embankment would probably cause an inundation.
So I told Nundiput he must make a bridge at a particular
spot. He agreed to do this, and I therefore passed orders
that it was not necessary to interfere with the embank-
ment ; and this being what was called a " miscellaneous "
case, I told Jugdeo to embody my order in a " roobekarree "
or "proceeding," drawn up in the vernacular. This was
done, and he produced it before me for signature one day
when I was very busy, and I signed it, trusting to him.

254 £*fi in thc Mofussil.

Some two months afterwards another petition was pre-
sented, to the effect that the opening for the bridge had
been made in the wrong place. I went again to the spot,
and found this to be fact, so ordered an opening to be
made in the embankment at the proper place at once.
Nundiput now appealed to the Judge, who called upon me
for a report on the matter ; and I then, in looking through
the papers, read through the above-mentioned roobe-
karree, which I found contained a most fulsome eulogium
on Nundiput, and made out that he had shown the greatest
public spirit in wishing to construct this road at his own
expense, and that it ought by no means to be interfered
with. I now, of course, had to neutralize the effect of this
roobekarree, and finally the Judge upheld my orders in the
matter. The embankment was broken through, the bridge
was never made, nor the road completed.

Nundiput told Furbelowe that he thought I had treated
him very badly, that he had let me have his house, had
subscribed to my town improvement fund, and done all he
could to please me ; and yet that I had decided against
him — typical of the native line of thought. Jugdeo, how-
ever, I felt certain knew as well as possible that the con-
struction of the road was all humbug ; that the embank-
ment was only intended to protect Nundiput from inunda-
tion at the expense of his neighbours ; and must have had
some consideration from him for writing the roobekarree.
I did not believe in the road myself; but if it were to do no
harm, there was no necessity for interference on my part.

As the cold weather progressed, and the cutting of the
rice crop began, various riot cases occurred. In cases of

A Crop Fight. 255

murder or accidental death, if the corpses were not too
much decomposed for transmission, they were sent in for
post-mortem examination by the Sub-assistant Surgeon ;
and in murder cases I used to view the body myself. One
morning I was told that the body of a man killed in a
riot case was awaiting my inspection. I went out and
found the corpse of a splendid-looking fellow cleft from
the shoulder down to the middle. It was an awful wound.
Little Cookson went out to the spot to hold a local in-
quiry, and I remained behind, thinking that I ought not
to go out, but wait to hold the preliminary magisterial
inquiry.

In due course a report came in, to the effect that the
deceased, Sriram Thakoor, with some of his relatives and
labourers, had gone to cut his rice crop, when the Rajah of
Begumpoor had come on an elephant, with a number of
followers, armed with swords, spears, and clubs, and some
with reaping hooks, and had ordered them to cut what was
left of the crop and carry off that portion already cut ; that
the Thakoors had remonstrated, and shouted out, " duhai "
(justice). The Rajah had said, " Maro," and then one of
his followers, Sheik Lallun, had cut down Sriram with a
sword, and that others had wounded many of the Thakoors
with spears and clubs. Some four wounded men were sent
in as complainants, who gave evidence to this effect, and
ten or twelve very respectable-looking witnesses, who said
that they were working in their fields in the neighbour-
hood, and had seen all the above details, and further, that
all the crop was looted and carried off.

I issued warrants for the arrest of the Rajah and awaited

256 Life in the MofussiL

further details. At the end of a week I was thunderstruck
at receiving through the Magistrate a most tremendous
wigging from the Commissioner, Coldham. He scolded
everybody all round ; said the police had been slow, and
their report was most unsatisfactory ; that I had been
most apathetic in not proceeding at once to the spot
myself ; that the Magistrate was to blame for not telling
me to go ; that I was to go there now at once, and explain
why I had not gone before.

I should explain here, that in all heinous cases an
English report, prepared by the District Superintendent,
was sent to the Magistrate of the district, who forwarded it
to the Commissioner, with his remarks and orders to the
police ; so that the Commissioner was kept an courant of
all such matters.

I was indignant at the wigging, and said so to Jugdeo,
intimating that I did not think any good would be done
by my going out, especially as I had so much heavy work
in office. He replied with his usual good sense, that " the
first thing to be done was to obey orders." So I sent my
tent off to the spot, some twenty miles off, and started
myself the next day, having first given as my reason for
not going before, that I thought that the presence of the
Assistant Superintendent of Police on the spot rendered
mine not only unnecessary but unadvisable.

I had not gone a mile before I met the accused Rajah
coming in in a palanquin. He rolled out when he saw my
buggy coming, explaining that he had rheumatism and
could scarcely stand. I had ordered him to be admitted
to bail of 10,000 rs., and told him so. This appeared a

r

A Rajah in Trouble. 257

great relief to him, and he salaamed to the ground. He
vociferated that he had nothing to do with the riot ; he
had been ill in bed ; that the land was his, but he had
leased it to another, and in the lease was a special clause
to the effect that the responsibility of all criminal affairs
rested with the lessee ; and he held out a document, a
copy of the lease. I took it from him, though it was some-
what an irregular mode of filing a proof, and went on my
way, saying I would send for him if I wanted him.

On reaching the spot, I examined the locality, and found
the field in dispute was situated within a dried-up tank or
reservoir about two miles in length, excavated by some old
Hindoo king, and was approached by a sort of lane cut
through the embanking walls. Here I got hold of one
or two men actually working in the fields adjoining, and
took their evidence as to what they had seen. To my sur-
prise, they told a totally different story. They said that
Sriram Thakoor and his party had come in the early
morning with a crowd of followers and actually reaped
the crop ; that they were engaged in carrying it off, when
in the lane they met the opposite party under the Rajah's
lessee, who opposed their progress. Some abuse took
place, and then Sriram Thakoor, who was a great athlete
and clubman, stepped forward and hit Sheikh Lallun, who
appeared to be the hired champion of the other side, a
tremendous blow with his " latti ; " that Sheikh Lallun then
cut him down himself with his sword, some (c\v others
joined in the fray, and some were wounded on both sides.
The Rajah was not there at all.

This made me suspect that the evidence of the witnesses
VOL. I. s

258 Life in the Mofussil.

first taken was all false. I had ordered them to be on the
spot, and the next da)' examined them as to the fields in
which they had been working. Each man pointed out his
field, but when taken to the tent could not state its dimen-
sions ; and on inquiry I found these men had no cultivation
in this village at all, that their names were not on the rent
roll, and in fact that their statement was altogether false.

By degrees I elicited the real facts. The Rajah, who
was the landed proprietor, had had a long-standing dispute
with the Thakoors about rent. Finally he had got tired of
it, and leased the land to a stubborn Mohammedan, Ameer
Ali, on condition that he would bring these recalcitrant
Thakoors to reason. He had got a decree against them in
the Civil Court on some ground or other, and in execution
thereof had got their crops attached. Two peons (sheriff's
officers) of the Civil Court had been sent down to go
through the legal form of attaching the crops ; but the
Thakoors had bribed them to put off execution of process
for one day. In the meantime they had got a large party
together and cut the crop ; but were met as described
by the witnesses above, the peons being with the lessee,
Ameer Ali's party, and on their way to attach the crop.
Ameer Ali was prepared for resistance ; but the other
party were the aggressors, and the whole case was re-
versed.

I afterwards asked Cookson how it was that he had been
so easily taken in by the witnesses he had sent in, and
he told me that on arriving on the spot he had found them
actually in the fields in the vicinity, and that they had pre-
tended to run away, as if unwillinr to be asked to give evi-

y ugdeo Suspect. 259

dence in the matter. He had ordered them to be caught ;
and as they deposed before him in a very reluctant man-
ner, he thought they were all the more likely to be speak-
ing the truth. Of course it was a pity that he had not
made them point out which were their fields.

In due course I committed all this batch of witnesses to
the Sessions Court for trial for perjury; but Percival acquit-
ted them all on what seemed to me to be very insufficienc
grounds.

I also committed some of the rioters on the Thakoor's
side ; but they too were acquitted, the Judge remarking
that it was a very confused case. Sheikh Lallun evaded
justice for a long time, but he was at length caught, and I
committed him for trial for the homicide of Sriram Tha-
koor ; but the Judge admitted his plea that he was exer-
cising the right of self-defence, and acquitted him also. I
thought that, as he had gone to the spot armed for a
battle, he ought not to have been let off. There is no
doubt that he suffered severely from the effects of Sriram's
blow. The Rajah of course I set at liberty; but as he was
legally bound as land-owner to have used every effort to
prevent the riot, and also to have informed me of it, — and
as it was proved that he was cognizant of it, — I fined him
500 rs., or £50, under Sec. 154 of the Penal Code ; which
sum he promptly paid, without even appealing against the
order. The sheriff's officers were dismissed, on my report
of their conduct.

Just as the case was concluded, I received an anonymous
letter, saying that J ugdeo had taken a bribe of 5,000 rs.
from the Rajah for his good services in the matter, and

260 Life in the Mofussil.

that the current report was, that I also had received a simi-
lar amount, and that Jugdeo was telling everybody that he
could do what he liked with me. The report, possibly, was
based on the fact that the Rajah had paid his bail of 10,000
rs. in cash into my treasury ; and it may have been stated
that it was so divided. I don't think the natives really
believed that I personally had taken any money, but very
likely they thought Jugdeo had ; and perhaps he had.

However, on the top of this, came a note from Coldham
enclosing a similar petition, which had been sent to the
Lieutenant-Governor, and which had been forwarded by
him to Coldham " for disposal." This meant, to take any
or no steps, as he might think fit. His note to me was,
" Tear this up, after perusal/'

However, it all annoyed me very much ; and the next
morning, when I went to Court and Jugdeo began to read
the reports, I told him to hold his tongue, and to hand
them over to the Nazir to read. I never saw a man look
so crushed, but it was the only way I could see of snub-
bing him in public, as Ellis had advised ; and I had no
proof against him of bad conduct.

Wahid Ali Khan was a great friend of his, and came to
me privately, on hearing of his disgrace, to intercede for
him ; whereupon I snubbed him too, and told him he had
very much lowered himself in my estimation by interfering
in matters which did not concern him. He went away sor-
rowing, but I forgave him in a week or so.

Poor Jugdeo asked for a fortnight's leave, and I gave it
him very willingly. In his absence a very untoward thing
occurred. Some of the Nepaulese chieftains who lived on

A Nepaulese Raid. 261

the border had taken leases of certain villages in the
Durbhungah estate ; and one of them, Roopun Singh by
name, had fallen into arrears with his rent. A decree for
ejectment had been obtained against him ; and he had
come across the border with a small band of followers and
some elephants, and carried off the two village accountants
(patwarrees) with all their papers. I had heard nothing of
this ; but presently an order came from the Magistrate,
asking for further information, and I replied that I had
received no report from the police. Whereupon the police
were called upon for an explanation as to why no informa-
tion had been sent to me, though the Magistrate of the
district had received it. It turned out on inquiry, that
information had been sent to me, but that it was contained
in three lines at the end of a long report devoted to other
matters, such as pounds and roads. Wuzeer Ali, the Nazir,
had read it out in the usual sing-song way ; but probably
had not thought it worth while to read the last three lines ;
and my order, recorded on the back of the report, only
referred to the first portion. Just at this crisis, Jugdeo
returned. It was of course a sort of satisfaction to him
that this had happened in his absence. I had to eat hum-
ble pie ; but the police caught it from the Commissioner
for putting such an important matter in the fag-end of a
report.

Jugdeo was equal to the occasion. He knew all about the
treaty with Nepaul, framed to meet such cases ; and I pre-
pared a case with much care for submission to the Gover-
nor General through the Foreign Office. Negotiations
were entered into with promptitude; and Roopun Singh

262 Life in the MofussiL

was ordered by Jung Bahadur, nominally prime minister,
but really king of Ncpaul, to give up the patwarrees, and
pay a fine of 500 rs., or ^50, which Jung wished to make-
over to the aggrieved parties ; and the offender was to be
punished by six months' imprisonment in his own Jiousc.
The fact was, that he was a friend, if not a connection, of
Jung Bahadur's, and at first he was inclined to be recalci-
trant and actually defeated a small band of men that Jung
sent for his arrest. However, he thought better of it, and
made haste into Katmandou, to make due submission,
and was sentenced as above. Our Government refused to
allow the patwarrees to receive the 500 rs. ; but they came
to me and thanked me in the most touching way for their
restoration to freedom and their native country. They
had not been badly treated, but very much frightened.

After this I allowed Jugdeo to perform his usual duties,
but I thought it advisable always to treat him with con-
siderable reserve.

Another annoying thing took place about this time.
Two brothers had had a quarrel, and the one had struck
the other and killed him on the spot. The deceased had
an enlarged spleen, which had been ruptured by the blow
and caused instantaneous death, a very common thing in
India. There was no doubt about the case ; but as the
place of occurrence was only six miles off, I rode out in
the morning, telling the head constable who had charge
of the case to meet me on the spot. The father of the
deceased was a poor peasant, and after I had finished my
inquiry, which disclosed no new facts, he came to me with
a propitiatory offering of 1 rupee (2s.) in his hand. The

A Wife too Many. 263

head constable, — whose own salary, by the way, was only
14s. a month, — intervened, saying, " No ; you are a poor
man, the hakim will not take anything from you."

If I could have killed him with a look, I suppose I
should have done so. But the harm was done, no amount
of explanation would have made the rustic understand
that we officials thought it wrong to take presents. He
would only have been frightened, and thought that he
ought to have offered more. As for the policeman, he
naturally would have taken a bribe willingly offered, and
would probably have demanded it if it had not been. I
scolded him to the best of my ability ; but I knew he was
no worse than his compeers.

Curiously enough, on my return I found another body
awaiting my inspection — that of a beautiful Mohammedan
girl, about seventeen years of age. She had a deep wound
behind one ear, and the mark of a cord round her neck.
The story of this case is best told in the confession of one
of the murderers, or rather murderesses, of the deceased.

" My name is Sukee, and my husband and I had been
married twenty years. We have two children, one my
daughter (about eighteen) who killed the deceased with
me, and my son married who lives in another village.
A year ago my husband married this other wife (the
deceased). I am old and I am no longer pretty, but I
have worked for my husband and brought up our children.
When he married this other wife he neglected me ; he
spent all his money on her, and gave her new dresses and
the key of the rice store. To us, my daughter and me,
he gave nothing. She used to mock us and laugh at us,

2 >4 Life in the Mofussil.

and dance before us in her new dresses ; and often we
had nothing to eat when my husband was away from
home, as she would give us nothing.

"The other day, when my husband was away, my son had
come over to visit me. He had come a long way, and he
was tired and hungry. I wanted to give him a meal, but
I had nothing, and I humbled myself before the new wife
and asked her for a little rice; but she refused, and mocked
me and abused me, and my son was obliged to go away
without food. Then my daughter and myself consulted,
and we said we must kill her, otherwise our life is no-
thing. So we waited until she had gone to sleep that
night, and I strangled her with a string, and my daughter
beat her head with a curry stone " (used for grinding curry
powder).

The daughter confirmed this story. She was a widow
altogether dependent on her father. I felt sorry for them,
very ; but I was obliged to commit them for trial to the
Sessions Court, and Percival sentenced them to death,
considering, that though they had had great provocation,
as several hours had elapsed, and the murder had been
committed with deliberation, this could not be taken into
account. I informed them of the sentence, which they
received with apathy. But in these cases the confirmation
of the High Court is necessary, and the Judge in Calcutta
to whom this happened to be referred commuted the sen-
tence to transportation for life, on the curious ground that
there was no "dole," or deceit, in the matter.

When I informed the women of this, they were in de-
spair. They begged to be hung instead ; and it was neces-

An Illegal Lease. 265

sary to keep a careful watch over them to prevent their
committing suicide. Prisoners under sentence of transpor-
tation are sent to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Ben-
gal ; and the natives of India, who have a religious dread
of the sea and an undefined fear of the nature of the
savage inhabitants of these islands, — indeed a very vague
idea of the whole thing, — would much prefer death to this
exile.

At length, on the Collectorate side, I came into an-
tagonism with Furbelowe, as Manager under the Court of
Wards. He had ejected, for arrears of rent, a certain
lessee, without bringing a case in Court. The ejected
party sued for recovery of possession, under the provisions
of Act X. of 1859, alleging that his ejectment was illegal.
Both parties filed the lease, in which it was agreed that the
lessee, if in arrears, should be liable to ejectment without
being sued in Court. I held that the lease was illegal, and
contrary to the provisions of Act X. of 1859, and that I
could not recognise it ; that such leases were intended to
make the Court of Wards judge and plaintiff in its own
case ; and that whenever the other party did not acquiesce
in all its proceedings, the tendency would be to create dis-
turbance. Supposing, for instance, that a lessee, whose
ejectment was sought under these conditions, should resist,
and the Court of Wards were to apply to the magisterial
authorities for assistance, they would be bound, according
to the law, not to interfere with the party already in
possession, and to refuse the application. 1 therefore
considered that the plaintiff in this case had been illegally
ejected, and gave him a decree for recovery of possession.

266 Life in the Mofussil,

This created a great sensation, as nearly all the Durb-
hungah leases had been framed on these principles ; and
Furbelowe told me afterwards that I had taken upon
myself a grave responsibility, as both Blake and Coldham
had approved this form of lease. I could only reply that I
had, as a judicial officer, decided as I thought right, ac-
cording to the best of my ability. The result, however,
proved that I was right ; for this case was never appealed.
The Lieutenant-Governor himself had the matter under
consideration, and the form of lease was altered.

I may mention that shortly before this Cookson's wife
had arrived, and they were continuing to put up with me.
She had brought her baby with her, a pretty little child of
three months old, and Cookson had gone into Mozuffer-
pore to meet her, and drive her out in his buggy. Seven
horses were considered necessary for this journey, and
animals had been borrowed for all the stages but one,
which had to be accomplished by Cookson's own quad-
ruped, a wretched little beast, furnished with very old
rickety harness. At first it refused to start, and then
dashed forward with a bound ; the harness all fell to pieces
like tow, down came the shafts on the ground, both break-
ing, while the horse disappeared in the distance. They
were obliged to re-harness the horse just taken out, after
making jury-shafts with a couple of bamboos, and arrived
some two hours late for dinner, just as I had given up
expecting them, and was preparing for bed. It was a
startling introduction to Mofussil life for a young mother
and baby.

Poor young baby ! mj acquaintance with it was short ;

A Death. 267

for less than a month afterwards, it fell ill of dysentery,
and died after three days' suffering. The loss of a child
is always a touching thing, but in this out-of-the-way
place the anguish was doubly felt ; the more so as, I
think, we were all conscious that the little one might
have been saved, had European medical assistance been
promptly available. The Native Sub-assistant Surgeon
had done his best, according to his lights ; but he had
never treated an European child before. I was at office
when the sad news reached me in the afternoon. Burial
follows so quickly on death in India, that the first
thing to be done was to make the necessary preparations
for conveying the little corpse the thirty-five miles into
Mozufferpore. I went over to Furbelowe, who happened
to be at Durbhungah. He was most kind, and sent a
mounted messenger into Mozufferpore to give orders that
the grave should be dug, ordered his carpenter to make a
small coffin, and had daks laid for a barouche for the next
morning. The poor parents were completely overcome, and
I ordered myself to be called the next morning when the
coffin should be ready. It came about four o'clock, and I
called Cookson out, and asked if he would like to do what
was necessary ; but both he and his poor wife were too
prostrate with grief to do anything. So upon me devolved
the inexpressibly sad office of nailing down the little
clumsy case, made in native fashion. I recollect taking it
out into the verandah, that they might not hear the sound
of the hammer. As they drove off, about an hour after-
wards, vis-a-vis to their mournful burden, the assembled
servants raised a wail of lamentation ; and it was a relief

26S Life in the Mofussil.

to me that my work in office was heavy enough to turn
ni\' thoughts from the sad scene.

They were away three days or so, and as (it being now
about the end of March) a tiger party in the adjoining
district of Bhaugulpore was about to make a start, and I
had received an invitation to join it, I thought it a good
opportunity to let them be alone in the house for a day or
two on their return. There were also some native holidays
coming in most conveniently, so the day before their re-
turn, on going into Court, I ordered all the mookhtyars
and legal agents present to come in, and I said, " Now I
have worked very hard for a long time, and I am going
away for three or four days' 'shikar' (sport), and I shall
expect you all to behave well, and to have no riots or
heavy cases in my absence. If any of your principals
have any such case, I shall look upon their mookhtyars
as bad men."

They all promised to be good, just like children ; and "as
I knew most of them would be glad to visit their friends
and relatives in my absence, I felt pretty confident.

That night I started in a palanquin, and the next day
reached an outlying indigo factory, where I found a
friendly planter, with an elephant ready to go on. After
a couple of hours' rest, for bath and breakfast, we started,
and had a long and weary night on the back of the
elephant. It was not possible to sleep for one second, for
fear of falling off, as we had only a "guddee," or cushion,
no " howdah " (framed seat). It was very tedious, and we
talked " de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis," about land
tenure, indigo-planting, law of evidence, native marriages,

A Night on the Back of an Elephant. 269

sudder distilleries, on which point he quite agreed with
me, etc., etc. My companion was very intelligent, and I
got a good deal of information from him. At length,
about 5 a.m., we saw the white tents of the encampment,
on the borders of the broad stream of the Coosee river,
and in an hour and a half, refreshed by a cheery welcome
and a cup of coffee, we were on our way to shoot.

The Coosee runs down from Nepaul, and is bordered
on its northern bank by the primeval forest of the
Terai ; on the other bank, the land is cleared and culti-
vated, while in the stream itself are numerous islands,
covered with long grass, to which thousands of cattle are
swum across for pasture. The tigers swim across from the
other side to feed upon the cattle, and the annual loss to
the herdsmen is very great. To the sportsman, however,
the place is a paradise. There are plenty of deer, fiorican,
and partridge, with an occasional rhinoceros. Our party
was a large one, and included several ladies, who, after we
had forded the river and formed line, were placed in the
centre, on two of the steadiest elephants.

The first day we got some deer, and I shot my first
fiorican — a beautiful bird, and very good eating. We saw
traces of rhinoceros, but did not come across the animals
themselves. On our return, we found a crowd of Brah-
mins feasting at the approach to the only practicable ford,
and as the feast was spread on the ground, we could not
pass through without disturbing them. We did our best,
but some of the rice got scattered, and an elephant or two
took a mouthful ; and I heard the Brahmins cursing us and
our female relatives as we moved off, and praying their

2 yo Life in the Mofussil.

gods to give us bad sport. We dined in a large tent, and
the ladies sang, and made the evening pleasant ; though
I am not sure that my bed was not the sweetest thing
to me.

The next day we visited another island, and had not
been beating for more than an hour, when (despite the
Brahmins' curse) the sportsman next to me in the line
shouted, "Tiger!" and fired. I just caught a glimpse of
some red and black stripes disappearing through the long
grass, and fired also. The order to chase was then given,
and the whole line moved on as rapidly as possible, the
elephants all trumpeting, and everybody peering into the
grass in front in a state of keen excitement. Presently,
at a small open space, we came on some spots of blood,
and while deliberating in which direction to go, I became
sensible of a roaring, crackling sound behind. But the
roar was not that of an animal ; and looking round, I saw
a vast sheet of flame and smoke advancing towards us
with the rapidity of the wind. "To the river," shouted
our leader — planter and sportsman of old-standing ; and
away we went at right angles to the fire, the island, for-
tunately, being very narrow, and stood in the shallow
water, while the flame rushed over the spot we had
recently been beating. There was a strong west wind
blowing, the dry wind of this season ; and the grass, set on
fire probably by some herdsman's pipe at the other end of
the island, had ignited like tow all along. It was exciting
to see the cattle all rushing into the water ; but I was
surprised to observe no wild animals, except one or
two deer.

An Island on Fire. 271

In about half an hour the fire had ceased, dying out as
rapidly as it had blazed up, and we returned to our sport.
We found several green patches which had not been
burned, and here doubtless any animals that might have
been on the island had taken refuge. Among others, our
tiger. We beat all these without success ; but on emerg-
ing from the last, we saw him in the distance, crawling
with difficulty over the ground, where the burnt grass was
still smoking. He was evidently badly wounded, and we
soon came up to him, and finished him. Then one of the
elephants was made to kick the body, to see that no life
was left in him, — for practically dead tigers have occasion-
ally killed over-rash sportsmen, — and finally we descended
from our positions of safety and examined our prey. He
proved to be a fair-sized tiger, and I was pleased to have
assisted at his death ; though it was not admitted that I
had been the first to wound him, so I did not get the skin.
He had not shown fight at all ; but yet it was something
to bag a tiger, and this was the first I had seen killed.
With much jabbering and hauling he was got on the back
of one of the guddee elephants ; and as the day was now
well spent, we returned to camp.

The Brahmins, who were now in their temple, which
we had to pass on our way, looked sullen at the incfficacy
of their curse. Before dinner, I saw the tiger skinned. It
was a curious sight, and the muscular arrangements of the
fore-arm and shoulder showed an astonishing power. One
blow from a tiger's paw is enough to smash in the skull
of a man.

The next day we tried yet another island, and had

2 7- Life in the Mofussil.

a long beat without getting any sport. It was fearfully
hot, and the ladies were much done up. Suddenly my
elephant, who was on the extreme right of the line, began
to trumpet and show signs of alarm. It was a small
animal, and not really fit to carry a howdah ; but I had
been unable to get a better, and as it was known to
be timid, its behaviour was not thought of much conse-
quence. We were just commencing to descend a slope
with grass some sixteen feet high all about us, so that
it was not possible to see much, when the elephant on
my left also began to trumpet. " What is all that row
about ?" said our leader. He had scarcely uttered the
words when there came a roar like many claps of
thunder, and there was a tiger on the head of my
elephant. He had got right on his head, and the ma-
hout sitting on the neck was completely under his
belly. The elephant was shaking his very best to get
the brute off, which of course had the effect of very
nearly shaking me out of the howdah. I felt myself
holding on with one hand to the framework of the
howdah, and trying to hold my gun straight with the
other, while I was actually looking down the roaring
animal's throat. I did pull the trigger ; but with the
gun wobbling so it was just a chance where the bullet
went, and it certainly did not hit the tiger. At the
same moment he fell off, unable to retain his hold, and
my elephant ran away. This takes longer to narrate
than it did to take place.

There were no trees, so there was no danger ; but the
shaking was awful, and myself, my guns, and my servant

A Fighting Tiger

■*/ o

behind were rolled about like peas in a frying-pan. I
cast a helpless glance back, and saw that the tiger had
broken through the line of elephants, and was bounding
away to the rear with his tail up, roaring as he went.
A straight shot from some one bowled him over ; but it
was evidently not a vital wound, for he stood up, having
got into a place where the jungle was lighter, and looked
at the line of elephants now advancing towards him. My
mahout, who was really a plucky fellow, had now turned
my elephant, and was with difficulty inducing it to fol-
low the rest. The tiger now came charging down at the
line and singled out the elephant of my friend with
whom I had travelled. He was a magnificent sight,
roaring and tearing up the grass as he came, with his
bristles all erect and his tail lashing his sides; but my
friend hit him in the foot with a bullet which com-
pletely rolled him over. He was up again directly and
charged all round till other wounds made him weaker
and weaker ; and at length I managed, having now come
up nearer, to send a bullet into his mouth.

On measurement he was found to be ten feet six, a
young tiger, and well marked. He was a grand animal,
and had certainly done his best to give us the sensation
we sought, for he had attacked us without being touched,
and fought gamely to the end. Our captain told me
he had never seen a narrower escape, as the brute's paw
must just have shaved my face ; a few inches would
have made all the difference in the result. One of the
ladies told me she had got into a drowsy state from
the heat, and was roused by the roar to see the spec-
VOL. I. T

274 Life in the Mofussil.

tacle of the animal on my elephant with his head close
to mine.

On taking stock of damages, I found that the mahout
had had a great gout of flesh taken out of his left arm,
and that there were some severe claw wounds in the
elephant's forehead. These were, I expect, caused by the
claws of the hind feet, which must have been expanded
to their utmost, for I could scarcely span with one hand
the space between the scratches. I had some brandy and
water in the howdah, and washed the mahout's wound,
which must have made him smart; but he seemed much
more concerned that his "chapkan," or jacket, was torn.
This was a matter easily settled, and he pluckily consented
to go on beating, though my elephant was very fidgety
and timid for the rest of the day, and anything but com-
fortable.

We rather hoped to get the female of our dead tiger;
and in about half an hour after the above, being again
in very thick jungle, some animal was observed moving
the grass in front of us. We formed a widish circle, and
commenced closing in with a keen sensation of excitement,
when the animal made a rush out between two elephants,
and proved to be an ordinary-sized hog deer. This
caused a great revulsion of feeling, and nobody thought
of firing at him. After this we took to small game,
and finished the day pleasantly enough. The tiger skin
was awarded to me on a consideration of all the circum-
stances, and I was very pleased to get it. The next day
being Sunday, I made a start in the evening of this
eventful day, and by travelling a weary forty hours in

Local Self-government. 275

a palanquin got back to Durbhungah in time to hold
Court in the afternoon of Monday. Nothing trouble-
some had occurred, but orders had been received that
the new Municipal Act III. of 1864 had been extended
to the town of Durbhungah.

The intention of the Act was to commence the instruc-
tion of the native community in the mysteries of local
self-government. It gave me a great deal of trouble.
Firstly, it was necessary to select persons to be recom-
mended through the Magistrate and Commissioner to
Government for appointment as municipal commissioners.
I sent up the names of my honorary committee, with
one or two others, all of whom were approved. The
Magistrate of the district was ex-officio Chairman, and
myself Vice-chairman. The Commissioner, Coldham,
was an ex-officio commissioner, to give him the right to
attend meetings if necessary, and the Public Works
official, called the Executive Engineer, attached to the
district, was also a member of the body, as an expert
to be consulted.

The scheme of assessment was changed, and the tax
was to be an assessment not exceeding j\ per cent,
on the rental of houses and lands situate within muni-
cipal limits. The circumstances of the persons liable to
the tax were no longer to be taken into consideration,
and there was no power to exempt any one from pay-
ment on the ground of poverty. As a very large num-
ber of houses, or rather huts, in Durbhungah were let
for 8d. or is. per annum, it will easily be understood
that the collection of j\ per cent, on this sum in four

2; 6 Life in the Mofussil.

quarterly instalments could not result in much profit
to the Commissioners. Indeed, it was clear that the
proceeds of the tax, at the maximum rate of j\ per
cent., which was at once and unanimously decided upon
by the commissioners, would be less than those under
the old law. The new Act gave us power to spend
all surplus receipts on hospitals, schools, and various
other improvements ; but as it appeared probable that
the payment of the municipal police, which was to be a
first charge on our revenues, would absorb all but a few
shillings annually, we found it scarcely necessary to frame
any scheme for these purposes.

The first thing we had to do was to reassess the
whole town, which cost money and labour, for the result
was 7,000 appeals, each of which must be decided by
at least three commissioners. There were nine of us
actually working members, and we divided ourselves into
three parties, and so only had some 2,300 each to do ;
but it was weary work, and a heavy addition to my
other duties. Just at this time, too, occurred one of the
fires usual in Durbhungah at this season, when every-
thing is rendered as inflammable as touchwood by the dry
west wind. I had previously issued orders in my capacity
as magistrate, that all thatched houses in Durbhungah
should be tiled, and no fires lighted between 8 a.m.
and 6 p.m. The legality of these orders was more than
doubtful, and I did not exact strict obedience to them ;
but I hoped it would make the inhabitants generally
careful. On this ocasion 700 habitations were burned
down. The fire originated in a small thatched hut which

4 Hot-weather Fire.

* I

had not been tiled, and which leaned against a rather
pretentious tiled mansion. When I went to view the
scene of the conflagration, the owner of this latter assailed
me with loud lamentations, saying, " What is the use of
my obeying your orders, when the owner of this wretched
little hut ruins us all by not attending to them." The
owner was a poor old woman, who certainly had no
money to spend on tiles, so I could say nothing in
reply.

However, all the burnt-out people now petitioned for
remission of their tax until their houses should be
rebuilt, and this necessitated 700 more inquiries and
decisions. We all worked hard, none more so than
Bunwarree Lall, mentioned above as having opened the
bidding for subscriptions at the meeting called by me
soon after my arrival at Durbhungah. I was much pleased
with him, as he showed more energy and spirit than is
usually found in natives of his class.

He had, too, offered to spend 50,000 rs. in building a
bridge over the river Bhagmatty, a narrow and deep
stream about two miles outside Durbhungah, on the Mo-
zufferpore road. His object was to built a temple on
the other side of the stream, and make it easy of access
by means of the proposed bridge. All he demanded of
Government was, that the Public Works Department
should supply him with a plan of the work ; but he in-
sisted on keeping its construction under his own control,
as he had dealings with Nepaul, and could get stone and
timber down the river of good quality and at small ex-
pense. His further object was to avoid waste of money

27S Life in the Mofussil.

by the Public Works officials. He had very good
grounds for this, and I supported his request to the best
of my ability. The Public Works Department, how-
ever, refused to supply a plan unless allowed to carry it
out themselves, and held their own ; for as far as I know,
the bridge is not yet built, and this great convenience
lost to a large number of travellers.

In the middle of all this, a heavy charge of rioting was
brought against him. He had some land some few miles
out of Durbhungah, and a boundary dispute had arisen
between him and the owner of the neighbouring estate.
Both parties had turned out in force, and blows had been
interchanged, and one or two tolerably severe wounds in-
flicted. It was not asserted that he was present in person,
but as the inquiry proceeded evidence was forthcoming
that he had instigated the rioters on his side. It was a
complicated and difficult case ; but so far I had not found
it necessary to compel his attendance in Court in person,
when I received official information that I was appointed
to officiate as Joint Magistrate and Deputy Collector of
Nuddea, a district some 400 miles distant. I was inclined
to think that I could leave this case for disposal by my
successor.

He was not to arrive for a fortnight ; but there were
so many witnesses, and the defence was such a long
affair, and some of the leaders of the riot on both sides
had not yet been arrested, so that it was not probable it
would be ripe for final orders before the expiration of
that time.

I was as much surprised as pleased to find the genuine

Honourable Parsimony. 279

(at least I believed it so) regret expressed at my departure
Cookson was naturally sorry. Nundiput had told him that
he could not let any successor of mine have his house.
He was entitled by the Government orders to one room
in the new subdivisional residence. But the new sub-
divisional residence, built on the model plan by the P.W.D.,
contained only three rooms, two bath rooms, and a veran-
dah. The amount allowed for the purpose by a Govern-
ment in this respect parsimonious in the extreme, was
small, and the P.W.D. were not good hands at making
small amounts go far. My successor was a married man ;
and the problem of two married couples living in three
rooms, of which the largest was only 20 ft. by 16 ft, was
not to be solved. So he and his wife sought the shelter
of the dak bungalow, and I persuaded Nundiput to let
my successor have his house until the subdivisional
buildings were completed. One of my clerks, I recollect,
— having, I suppose, his own ideas of what the residence
of a ruler should be, — asked me if the partially-erected
residence was not the cookhouse (baworchi khana). I
felt somewhat ashamed in telling him the truth ; though
perhaps I ought to have been proud to think that the
ruling nation was so careful of expenditure in such a
matter.

But I really believe that my native friends were as sorry
as Cookson. I was the first hakim who had been settled
at Durbhungah ; and though I have been obliged, through
fear of being prolix, to omit many details illustrative of
the fact, I was on terms of genuine friendliness with all the
leading native gentry in the neighbourhood, — such friend-

2 $o Life in the Mofussil.

liness, I moan, as caste restrictions and national charac-
teristics would permit. I had always been specially care-
ful to conform, as far as my knowledge allowed me, to their
notions of courtesy ; and, to the best of my recollection,
had never wilfully hurt the feelings of any of them. As
regards my Court work, I had honestly done my best for
the convenience of suitors ; and, being a tolerably quick
worker, had avoided vexatious delays. There were some,
of course, who disliked me. For instance, I don't think
Nokee Lall was sorry to see me go ; and the younger
brother of Ganeshur Singh, the young Rajah's uncle,
Mitreshur, probably disliked me, as I had endeavoured to
bring him to terms with his brother, with whom he was
quarrelling about their ancestral property, and whom I
believed to be in the right. My moral influence was, I
consider, worth something.

I have omitted to mention that in the cold season just
past, an Agricultural Exhibition had been held in Mozuf-
ferpore. The new Lieutenant-Governor was desirous of
introducing a series of these, and hoped to accustom the
mind of the native cultivator to some new ideas about
husbandry (at present the same implements are in use
as those of the time of the flood, or antecedent to it) and
breeding cattle, etc., etc. Upon me devolved the task of
stirring up the landholders in the Durbhungah jurisdiction
to exert themselves to assist in contributing to the forth-
coming show. It was only through them that the small
peasant farmers could be got at.

I held an open-air meeting, at which some of the land-
owners and a good many of their agents attended, and

An Agricultural Show. 28 1

placing the former on my right hand and the latter on my
left, I adjured them, in the best Hindustani I could com-
mand, to be zealous for the credit of the district of their
birth, and not to allow it to be surpassed by the contribu-
tions of outsiders. The landlords I addressed as " ap log,"
the honorific title given to an equal in conversation, and
begged them to bestir themselves ; the agents, as " turn,"
the term given to inferiors, and begged them to stir up
their principals. My planter friend, the patriarch above
mentioned, was present, and complimented me on the
manner in which the proceedings had been conducted.
As a result, the Durbhungah subdivision was really well
represented at the Show.

I was ordered in there, to assist during the week that
it lasted, and held my Court in a tent pitched in Ellis's
compound. The Show grounds were down by the Race
Course in a grove of trees. I was deputed, with one
or two others, to receive or reject objects brought for
exhibition.

Among other things that I was compelled to reject, were
a spotted deer, a peculiar kind of crane, a puppy with five
legs, and a he-goat that gave milk.

The populace, too, had curious rumours about the pur-
pose of the Exhibition, which had to be contradicted.
There were seven gates to the grounds, and most of the
samples of grain were exhibited in very small earthenware
platters, ranged on wooden shelves. One rumour was to
the effect that cannon were to be planted at each of these
gates ; that when a large crowd of people were assembled
inside, at a given signal they were all to be ordered to cat
VOL. I. U

jSj Life in the Mof&ssil.

out of these platters, and so lose their caste. Those who
refused were to be blown away from the guns.

I also had to act as judge in awarding prizes for grain
exhibited from the neighbouring district of Sarun ; but I
managed to get an intelligent native gentleman to go
round with me, and with his advice I managed to give
tolerable satisfaction.

On the whole, it was a very jolly time, for a great num-
ber of Europeans were assembled, and only suitors with
real grievances took the trouble to come all the way in
from Durbhungah to prosecute their cases, so that my
Court work was light, and I had a little leisure to enjoy
myself.

Ellis was a good deal worried with arrangements and
correspondence ; and when I afterwards became a full-
blown Collector I was able to appreciate the enormous
additional work that these extra things threw on an officer
in that position. On such occasions a Collector may truly
say, with the Psalmist, " Lord, how are they increased that
trouble me ! "

I was complimented on the result of the influence I had
exercised ; and now I was to leave the place where I had
employed nearly two years in creating that influence, and
go among a people who knew me not. And yet I could
not say that I should have wished it otherwise, for the
move was promotion to me. I should draw an extra ^240
a year, should be stationed at the head-quarters of the
district as the Magistrate's first lieutenant, and lead a
much less lonely life. And yet I was really and truly
sorry to say good-bye to my Tirhoot friends, and wrould

Good-bye to Durbhungah. 28

j

much have preferred that my promotion had been to the
post held by Melville in Mozufferpore. He was just
appointed to act as Civil Officer with the column about to
invade Bhootan. Cookson I never saw again. The number
of Assistant Superintendents of Police was not long after
much reduced ; and he was one of those whose services
were dispensed with, and who received a small compen-
sation.

Nearly all my furniture was eagerly bought up by my
native friends, — I mean chairs, tables, dog-cart, lamps.
They would probably none of them ever be used, but kept
in a special room, " dekhne ke waste" (to be looked at).
On leaving a district, civilians are allowed to dispose of
their goods and chattels in this way, as it is not supposed
that the natives will be anxious to curry favour with them
any longer, and no suspicion can attach to the transactions.
Yet many of my Durbhungah friends continued to corre-
spond with me for a long time ; and I received a letter from
one only the other day, after the lapse of a dozen years
from the date of my last seeing him.

At length the day of departure arrived. I had made
over charge to my successor ; I had given so many cer-
tificates of character to clerks, police officers, chuprassies,
tax darogahs, distillery darogahs, and every other person
who had served under me, that I was weary of writing the
words, "performed his duties to my entire satisfaction."
These certificates are most eagerly sought after, and in
more advanced districts the natives have all they gel
printed, and bound up into little books. Some of those
more intimately connected with me had gone as far as

284 Life in the Mofzissi/.

the river which Bunwarree Lall had wished to bridge, and
there I found him and Wahid Ali Khan. I promised to
say a last good word for his bridge in Mozufferpore, and
was quite relieved at length to find myself alone with
my groom.

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