From Egypt to Japan

CHAPTER XIV

Times have changed since twenty years ago, when Delhi was the head and front of the Rebellion. It is now as tranquil and loyal as any city in India. As we rode out to the Ridge, where the English planted their guns during the siege, we found it surmounted by a lofty Memorial Tower, reared to mark the spot where the courage of a few thousand men saved India. So completely is the English power re-established, that Delhi was lately chosen over all Indian cities as the one where should be gathered the most imposing display of troops to do honor to their future sovereign, the Prince of Wales. Some forty regiments, native and English, were mustered here to form a grand Camp of Exercise. Never before had India witnessed such a military display. Here were native regiments in the picturesque costumes of the East – the superb Sikh cavalry; a corps of guides mounted on camels; and heavy artillery drawn by elephants, which, as they came before the Prince, threw up their trunks and trumpeted a salute to the Majesty of England. Two weeks passed in military manœuvres, and the nights in a constant round of festivities. The Fort was brilliantly illuminated, and the Palace was thronged with "fair women and brave men," but they were those of another race, and speaking another language, from any known to the Great Mogul. Manly English forms took the place of the dusky Hindoos, and bright English eyes shone where once the beauties of the Seraglio "looked out from the lattice." As we walked through these marble halls that had just witnessed these splendid festivities, I could but think, What would the old fanatical Mohammedan Aurungzebe have said, if he could have seen, less than two hundred years after his day, a Christian prince from that distant island of which he had perhaps scarcely heard, received in his palace, the heir of a power ten thousand miles away, that from its seat on the banks of the Thames stretches out its hand across the seas to grasp and hold the vast empire of the house of Tamerlane?

The change has been from darkness to light. If England has not done as much for Delhi as the Great Mogul to give it architectural beauty, it has done far more for the people. It has given them good government for their protection, just laws rigidly enforced against the rich as well as the poor, a police which preserves perfect order; and it even cares for the material comfort of its subjects, giving them good roads, clean and well-lighted streets, and public gardens; thus providing for ornament and pleasure as well as for utility.

The Camp of Exercise was breaking up as we left Delhi, and the troops were marching home. We saw them filing out of the gates of the city, and drew up by the roadside to see the gallant warriors pass. Among them was the corps of Sikh guides, or couriers, mounted on "swift dromedaries." As they were scattered along the road, our guide asked some of them to show us how they could go. In an instant they dashed their feet against the sides of their "coursers," and set them off at full speed. I cannot say that they were very beautiful objects. The camel with his long strides, and with the legs of his rider outspread like the wings of a bird, looked like an enormous ostrich flying at once with legs and wings in swift chase over the desert. But certainly it was a picturesque sight. The infantry marched in column. The spectacle was very gay, as the morning sun shone on the waving banners and gleaming bayonets, and the sound of their bugles died away in the distance. Regiments had been leaving for days, and were scattered at intervals far to the North. As we travelled at night, we saw their camp-fires for a hundred miles. Indeed the whole country seemed to be a camp. Once or twice we came upon a regiment at sunset, just as they had pitched their tents. They had parked their guns, and picketed their horses, and the men were cooking their evening meal. It was a busy scene for an hour or two, till suddenly all became quiet, and the silence of night was broken only by the sentinel's tramp and the jackal's cry.

At Gazeeabad we met Sir Bartle Frere, the chief of the suite of the Prince of Wales, and Canon Duckworth, his chaplain, who were going North on the same train, and found them extremely courteous. The former, I think, must be of French descent from his name (although his family has been settled in England for generations), and from his manners, which seemed to me more French than English, or rather to have the good qualities of both. When French courtesy is united with English sincerity, it makes the finest gentleman in the world. He is an "old Indian," having been many years in the Indian service, and at one time Governor of Bombay. I could but share the wish (which I heard often expressed) that in the change which was just taking place, he were to be the new Governor-General of India.

Canon Duckworth seemed to me also a very "manly man." Though coming to India in the train of royalty, he is much less interested in the fêtes which are setting the country ablaze, than in studying missions, visiting native churches and schools and orphanages. Our American missionaries like his bearing, and wish that he might be appointed the new Bishop of Bombay. One fact should be mentioned to his credit – that he is one of the strongest temperance men in England, carrying his principles and his practice to the point of rigid total abstinence, which, for one travelling in such company, and sitting at such entertainments, shows a firmness in resisting temptation, greatly to his honor. It is a good sign when such men are chosen to accompany the future King of England on his visit to this great dependency, over which he is one day to rule.

That night we had our first sight of the Himalayas. Just at evening we saw on the horizon a fire spreading on the side of a mountain. It was kindled by the natives, as fires are sometimes lighted in our forests or on our prairies. There were the Himalayas!

We now entered the most Northwestern Province of India, the Punjaub, which signifies in Persian "the land of the five streams," which coming together like the fingers of a hand, make the Indus. About midnight we crossed the Sutlej, which was the limit of the conquests of Alexander the Great.

Morning brought us to Umritzur, the holy city of the Sikhs – a sect of reformed Hindoos, who began their "reforms" by rejecting idolatry, but have found the fascination of the old worship too strong for them, and have gradually fallen back into their old superstitions. Their most holy place is a temple standing in the centre of a large tank of water, which they call the Lake of Immortality, and with its pure white marble, and its roof made of plates of copper, richly gilded, merits the title of the Golden Temple. This is a very holy place, and they would not let us even cross the causeway to it without taking off our shoes; and when we put on slippers, and shuffled about, still they followed, watching us with sharp eyes, lest by any unguarded step we should profane their sanctuary. They are as fanatical as Mussulmans, and glared at us with such fierce looks that the ladies of our party were almost frightened. In the centre of the temple sat two priests, on raised mats, to whom the rest were making offerings, while half a dozen musicians kept up a hideous noise, to which the people responded in a way that reminded us of the Howling Dervishes of Constantinople.

A pleasant change from this disgusting scene was a visit to the bazaars, and to the places where Cashmere shawls are manufactured. Of the latter I must say that (as a visit to a dirty kitchen does not quicken one's appetite for the steaming dinner that comes from it), if our fine ladies could see the dens in which these shawls are woven, they might not wear them with quite so much pride. They are close, narrow rooms, in which twenty or thirty men are crowded together, working almost without light or air. The only poetical thing about it is that the patterns are written out in rhyme, which they read or sing as they weave, and thus keep the patterns so regular. But the rooms themselves seem like breeding places for the cholera and the plague. But out of this filth comes beauty, as a flower shoots up from the damp, black soil. Some of the shawls were indeed exquisite in pattern and fabric. One was offered to us for eight hundred rupees (four hundred dollars), which the dealer said had taken two years and a half in its manufacture!

We left Umritzur at five o'clock, and in a couple of hours rolled into the station at Lahore. As the train stopped a friendly voice called our name, and we were greeted most heartily by Dr. Newton, the father of the Mission. Coolies were waiting to carry our baggage, and in a few minutes we were in an American home, sitting before a blazing fire, and receiving a welcome most grateful to strangers on the other side of the world. Dr. Newton is the head of a missionary family, his four sons being engaged in the same work, while his only daughter is the wife of Mr. Forman, another missionary. Very beautiful it was to see how they all gathered round their father, so revered and beloved, happy to devote their lives to that form of Christian activity to which he had led them both by instruction and example. Here we spent four happy days in one of the most pleasant homes in India.

Lahore, like Delhi, has a historical interest. It was a great city a thousand years ago. In 1241 it was taken and plundered by Genghis Khan; a century and a half later came Tamerlane, who did not spoil it only because it was too poor to reward his rapacity. But as it recovered a little of its prosperity, Baber, in 1524, plundered it and partially burnt it. But again it rose from its ashes, and became a great city. The period of its glory was during the time of the Moguls, when it covered a space eighteen miles in circumference, and this vast extent is still strewn with the ruins of its former greatness. Huge mounds, like those which Layard laid open at Nineveh, cover the mighty wreck of former cities.

But though the modern city bears no comparison to the ancient, still it has a political and commercial importance. It is the capital of the Punjaub, and a place of commerce with Central Asia. The people are the finest race we have seen in India. They are not at all like the effeminate Bengalees. They are the Highlanders of India. Tall and athletic, they seem born to be warriors. Their last great ruler, old Runjeet Sing, was himself a soldier, and knew how to lead them to victory. Uniting policy with valor, he kept peace with the English, against whom his successors dashed themselves and were destroyed. All readers of Indian history will remember the Sikh war, and how desperate was the struggle before the Punjaub was subdued. But English prowess conquered at last, and the very province that had fought so bravely became the most loyal part of the Indian empire. It was fortunate that at the breaking out of the mutiny the Governor of the Punjaub was Sir John Lawrence, who had a great ascendancy over the natives, and by his courage and prompt measures he succeeded not only in keeping them quiet, but in mustering here a considerable force to restore English authority in the rest of India. The Punjaubees took part in the siege of Delhi. From that day they have been the most trusted of natives for their courage and their fidelity. They are chosen for police duty in the cities of India, and three months later we were much pleased to recognize our old friends keeping guard and preserving order in the streets of Hong Kong.

Old Runjeet Sing is dead – and well dead, as I can testify, having seen his tomb, where his four wives and seven concubines, that were burnt on his funeral pile, are buried with him. His son too sleeps in a tomb near by, but only seven widowed women were sacrificed for him, and for a grandson only four! Thus there was a falling off in the glory of the old suttee, and then the light of these fires went out altogether. These were the last widows burnt on the funeral pile, and to-day the old Lion of the Punjaub is represented by his son Maharajah Dhuleep Sing, of whose marriage we heard such a romantic story in Cairo, and who now lives with his Christian wife in Christian England.

We had now reached almost the frontier of India. Two hundred and fifty miles farther we should have come to Peshawur, the last military post, on the border of Afghanistan, which no man crosses but at the peril of his life. We find how far North we have come by the race and the language of the people. Persian begins to be mingled with Hindostanee. In the streets of Lahore we meet not only the stalwart Punjaubees, but the hill tribes, that have come out of the fastnesses of the Himalayas; the men of Cabul – Afghans and Beloochees – who have a striking resemblance to the Circassians, who crossed the Mediterranean with us on their pilgrimage to Mecca, the long dresses of coarse, dirty flannel, looking not unlike the sheepskin robes of the wild mountaineers of the Caucasus.

One cannot be so near the border line of British India without having suggested the possibility of a Russian invasion, the fear of which has been for the last twenty years (since the Mutiny and since the Crimean War) the bugbear of certain writers who are justly jealous of the integrity of the English Empire in the East. Russia has been steadily pushing Eastward, and establishing her outposts in Central Asia. These gradual advances, it is supposed, are all to the end of finally passing through Afghanistan, and attacking the English power in India. The appearance of Russian soldiers in the passes of the Hindoo Koosh, it is taken for granted, will be the signal for a general insurrection in India; the country will be in a state of revolution; and at the end of a struggle in which Russians and Hindoos will fight together against the English, the British power will have departed never to return. Or even should the Russians be held back from actual invasion, their approach in a threatening attitude would be such a menace to the Indian Empire, as would compel England to remain passive, while Russia carried out her designs in Europe by taking possession of Constantinople.

This is a terrible prospect, and no one can say that it is impossible that all this should yet come to pass. India has been invaded again and again from the time of Alexander the Great. Even the mighty wall of the Himalayas has not proved an effectual barrier against invasion. Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, with their Tartar hordes, crossed the mountains and swept over the plains of Northern India. A King of Persia captured Delhi, and put out the eyes of the Great Mogul, and carried off the Peacock Throne of Aurungzebe. What has been, may be; what Persia has done, Russia may do.

But while no one can say that it is impossible, all can see that the difficulties are enormous. The distance to be traversed, the deserts and the mountains to be crossed, are so many obstacles set up by nature itself. An army from the Caspian Sea must march thousands of miles over great deserts, where even a small caravan can hardly subsist, and then only by carrying both food to eat and water to drink. Many a caravan is buried by the sands of the desert. What then must be the difficulty of passing a whole army over such a distance and such a desert, with food for men and horses, and carrying guns and all the munitions of war! Five years ago, Russia attempted a campaign against Khiva, and sent out three separate expeditions, one of which was forced to turn back, not by hostile armies, but by the natural obstacles in its path, while the main column, under Gen. Kaufman, came very near succumbing to heat and thirst before reaching its destination. But if the deserts are crossed, then the army is at the foot of the loftiest mountains on the globe, in the passes of which it may have to fight against savage enemies. It is assumed that Russia will have the support of Afghanistan, which will give them free access to the country, and aid them in their march on India; though how a government and people, which are fanatically Mussulman, should aid Russia, which in Europe is the bitterest enemy of Turkey, the great Mohammedan power, is a point which these alarmists seem not to consider.