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tribe back upon another, though they are more jealous of such invasion than more civilized nations. Well, I am turning this to good account. There has been a dearth among the Boogtees and Murrees, and I have offered help to the last, while I drive in two other tribes upon the first. I think I am driving them to desperation.

"28th January.-Halt here in this valley between the two passes. The situation is dangerous; but I know my enemy, and I hold the passes. Sent off a cossid to Simpson, to tell him to march, as the passes are mine, and no enemy in his front. "29th.-Received an answer from Simpson; he is hard by, halting, and will make Deyrah to-morrow.

"30th.-Ruminated all day yesterday. I made a short march to the east, and up the valley; I suspected the enemy were there; we found lots of tracks of cattle, and one camp-follower, freshly murdered; poor fellow, he went one mile beyond our posts, to cut grass, and they caught him, and, of course, murdered him, and will many more, for no orders or examples will prevent these men wandering thus. M'Murdo's horse-keeper, coming through the pass between the camps, was also murdered; M'Murdo had passed just before-a narrow escape. Well, I marched about five miles, and my conjecture was correct. We came upon the site of a large camp; I imagine not less than a thousand people had occupied it; there were fires lighted still, and two litters for carrying women on, also a camel; either they had fled the day before, or had seen our march from the rocks. Well, I ruminate, and chew the cud; and as I thought, it came into my head, that our advance has left men in the hills, who have killed three or four of the people going along our line of communication, so I shall this night send back among the hills a force of about 300 infantry; and I will order a squadron of cavalry from Zurranee, to skirt the hills, and both meet at Tonge, just to give a search. At eleven to-night Jack marches, determined to do all that man can do to succeed; and woe to the robbers if they are met.

"31st.-Jack is come back; he could meet no robbers, but he has captured 2,000 head of cattle from them; this is as good-it starves them. He proves me right in saying these fellows are lurking behind, as to the amount of about one hundred ; I was sure they could not carry off all their cattle, and here we have it. We have now taken about 6,000 head of cattle from them, and a vast quantity of grain; this will be a sickener, at all events. I have turned out a good robber,* at all hazards, but I have not done yet. I mean to keep my word, when I told them I would play a rough game; I have not done yet; I must have a lot of prisoners if possible. I have sent M'Murdo with a troop of cavalry to meet Simpson, and take possession of Deyrah. I think he will find grain there, laid up for their winter consumption. I go on patiently, but unrelenting

1st February, 1845.-The rascally camel men have, to the tune of six hundred, refused to bring up provisions past Shahpoor, and I am fairly put to my trumps! Well, exertion must increase; I will use the camel corps, and dismount half the cavalry, if need be. I will eat Red Rover sooner than flinch before these robber tribes. We will advance somehow when I have fortified the Pass of Tallee; that is the key of all our operations; while I hold this pass, I can enter the hills, and come out as I please. I communicate with my cavalry, and our provisions come safely; my position is safe, but very critical, because I may fail in my object if I make a blunder. I am now drawn up north and south, across all the Boogtee and Doomkee and Jackramee valleys; their territory runs east and west; I command full thirty miles; singly men may pass, or in small parties; but I command the vales, and have captured full 6,000 of their cattle--I thus drive them in masses on neutral territory, and without food.

"2nd February.-I have sent Ali Akbar to hunt for camels in Kutch, and he will get me them—at least I hope so; if not, I can still dismount the cavalry, and our government camels are not quite done up; I shall wait; I am sure my operations are becoming felt.

"3rd. I knew I was right-I have some intelligence that Beja and all his men are at Mundo, a plain twenty miles in advance, dying of hunger; many expire daily; come, I will wait; let them fast; in four days the pass will be secure, and then I am at you, Beja, and mean to give you a bellyfull. Agh! there are his women, and be hanged to them; I must get them and the children out of the way, even though he escapes. Good news just come-Malet, with Ali Morad's offer to bring

Sir C. Napier is descended from the Scotts of Thirlestane. His enthusiasm here shows that the old border-blood is still hot in him.

in Beja, if I will have him. Answer, Yes, on condition that he and his whole tribe come and lay down their arms at my feet, and become prisoners of war, and go to the left bank of the Indus, and inhabit the spot given to them by his highness, Ali Moorad.' The prince is confident they will accept these terms; if they do, I shall be the happiest man in Scinde for a week! No more bloodshed, and this mountain of danger gloriously and usefully ended; for I think I shall be able to tame all these devils, and turn them into cultivators of the soil of Scinde; and the frontiers will not be disturbed again for fifty years, if the governor of Scinde has a grain of sense in him.

"4th.-Letter from Malet, the Ameer; says he is sure of Beja; I am not, just because his boasting highness says it; I would not give a for the word of a barbarian, unless knocked out of his mouth by such sharp and sudden kicks on the stern, that half his tongue came with the sentence. No, no, my dear Ali Moorad, yesterday you asked six days to get an answer: I gave this, but now you want eight; so I shall urge my march upon your friend two days sooner, which is remarkable, as Teague said of the planrty step which cost his mother a dollar! These two more days to settle a plain question, looks as if Ali was secretly giving Beja provisions. By the L-d! I will look sharp, and if I detect him, I will pull Mallet and John Curling out of his camp, and send a volley of grape shot into his highness's tent. This danger has just occurred to my mind; I will keep cavalry in his front, or these barbarians will dupe me yet. I doubt whether he dare play me such a prank. By Jupiter Ammon, if he does, I will blow him and his myrmidons to atoms! not a mother's son of them shall reach Kyrpoor. He dare not; yet he is such an ass there is no knowing what he will do. Well, I keep him in such a position that no earthly power can save him, if he plays me false.

"5th.-Dismounted half the camel corps, and sent them to bring up provision, but to make a night march in Tonge first. I think they may catch some cattle and men trying to get water; fortification of pass going on.

"6th.-Simpson is doleful, but all right. I have twelve days' provisions come up, and will march on the 8th, and have resolved to abandon this pass, and keep skirting in plains till I reach Door Khushta, from which I understand there is a good road to Deyrah. I shall then cut this pass altogether, by which I save a cavalry post, and have 200 more horsemen at my disposal, and still have no defile in my rear. "7th.-March to-morrow; all my arrangements made. My rear-guard will abandon this pass the 9th. The halt here has been very useful. But my line must be kept across their territories :

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"From A B I get to c D; I also leave Zurrannee, which now takes two hundred cavalry and one hundred foot. I could not sooner make the move; I had not prog, nor had I the knowledge of a rout in advance to Deyrah."

This journal, unfortunately, here concludes; but the campaign continued for about a month longer, within which time he forced the robbers to take refuge within the rocks of Trukkhee, which rise hundreds of feet perpendicular, with only three clefts, a few feet wide, to give entrance. There by prodigious marches he shut them up, and after a time they all surrendered, one tribe alone escaping. He then carried these robbers with their families down to the south of Scinde, and there made them build houses and cultivate land; which done, he settled them as proprietors of what their forced labour had created, and they remain peaceful, successful, and contented tillers of the earth.

Napier was now at liberty to pursue his course of beneficent government, and

to extend civilisation amongst his wild subjects. Great difficulties still met him, and in the April following he writes thus:

"Well, dear --I got down the robbers without bloodshed. This was glorious and delightful to me. I hope I shall do some good yet in this fine country. If I could but get your school to work here, I would be as happy as the day is long; but the difficulties, I fear, are not to be yet surmounted. 1st. Very wild men; 2nd, the Mahometan religion; 3rd, the language. The religion I would not touch, but they would not mix with us. It is not conversion they fear, but contamination. The language is the worst obstacle; many dialects are spoken in Scinde, but neither Persian nor Hindostanee by the poor, or even rich. Well, I am giving all who will cultivate fresh land, two years rent free, and leases for fourteen and twenty years. "I have drawn up a treaty with Ali Moorad (which he greatly resists), providing that no man who flies for protection from one state to another shall be given up, except for murder or for treason; and then the state so claiming the culprit shall send such proof of his delinquency as shall satisfy the state under whose protection he has thrown himself. Also, that any man may settle under either state at his pleasure. Ali says that his country will be a desert; that he will be ruined. The answer is, treat your labourers as I treat mine, and they won't come to me. This, I believe, is, if I am supported by the supreme government, the first treaty that ever was made in India to protect the poor from barbarian tyranny. I think it will be very likely to ruin Ali, as he says, and many others, for the tide of emigration is setting in strong to Scinde. Several tribes outside our frontier, that are independent, have written to beg of me to take them under my government. The rejoicing at the fall of Beja Khan and the robbers has extended for hundreds of miles. I fear we shall have a Punjab war; the thought sickens me, for I suppose they will send me to Moultan."

The length to which this notice has already extended, precludes our giving more than a short summary of Napier's admirable civil administration of the affairs of Scinde. As before mentioned, he abolished slavery and the suttee, and much checked their practice of infanticide. He has suppressed the custom of murdering women suspected of infidelity; for with the Beloochees, in such a case, evidence was not sought for-on mere suspicion the offended husband cut his wife to pieces with his sword. He has thoroughly protected the Hindoo and Scindian artisans and husbandmen, he has even amalgamated them with their Belooch conquerors, and reconciled those fierce barbarians to peaceful habits and to British rule. He has erected a judicial system, admirably suited to the social state of Scinde, without attempting to force on a people enslaved for centuries the institutions of the freeborn Teutons. He has taught all classes their equality in the eye of the law-he has given them faith in the justice of his tribunals. His native police have arrived at a state of so great efficiency that they even executed a chief, guilty of murder, by hanging him in the midst of his own tribe, fifty miles from any great military station. He has constructed two fortresses-Khotree and Larkhana-and repaired several others. He has cleared out or opened canals for hundreds of miles, and prepared estimates for much more extensive irrigation. He has given a port to Kurrachee by accomplishing the most difficult portion of a pier, two miles long, which he proposed to build there. By his erection of barracks, by procuring supplies of vegetables, and by other measures having the same object, he has made Kurrachee and other posts in Scinde healthy and agreeable to our troops. At Shikurpoor and Sukkur, which were annually devastated by pestilence, he caused the complete cessation of that calamity by the erection of a dyke twenty-nine miles long, which prevented the Indus from inundating a marsh between those towns. His government, though so efficient, was most economical; and after paying the whole expenses of the civil government and police, he was enabled from the revenueabout £400,000-to transmit more than £200,000 to Calcutta. From the increasing commerce and production, the collectors feel confident that in ten years the revenue will be £1,000,000. His officers, under his guidance, have discovered sources of wealth existing in the country, though previously unknownamongst them, salt, sulphur, and saltpetre; and he has directed and instructed the industry of the natives in the production of those articles of commerce previously known to them. Such is Napier as a civil governor.

As a warrior and politician, his fame has spread through Central Asia, so widely, that embassies with presents and proposals for treaties have come to him even from the shores of the Caspian. For the Punjab campaign he had prepared a magnificent combination, which would soon have crushed the Sikhs if we had been less successful at Sobraon; but he received an order to proceed himself to the Upper Sutlege, and break up his own Scindian army. When he arrived, which he did after a journey of marvellous celerity, our arms had been triumphant, and all danger from the Sikhs was passed.

The perfect tranquillity which prevails throughout Scinde, notwithstanding the lowering aspect of adjacent states, and the recent offer of troops from it to go up against Moultan, afford the strongest proofs of the wisdom and policy of his government. As a reward for all these services, we have as yet only to record the honorary distinction of Grand Cross* of the Bath. Whether, while rewards have been lavished on others, his country will esteem this an adequate acknowledgment for achievements, in our days paralleled by Wellington alone, remains to be seen.

The press, the touchstone of public feeling, seems no longer inclined to tole rate the manner in which Napier's services have been overlooked, judging from the many remonstrances which the periodical press has lately poured forth. The fol lowing affords an example :

"Although quite unconscious of deserving, and certainly by no means disposed to appropriate the flattering epithet applied to the press by Sir Charles Napier, we are, nevertheless, far from disinclined to do that gallant veteran justice. Of the splendour of his achievements and the value of his services, especially in India, we believe all whose opinion is worth having are unanimous. To his conquest of Scinde our recent successes in the East are attributable. No one can contemplate without dismay the effect of a demonstration on the left flank of our army by a hostile Scindian force during the late touch-and-go campaign in the Punjaub. All that valour could effect would, no doubt, have been achieved by troops the most valiant in the world; but, after our experience of the Sikh intrepidity, the odds would have been perilous indeed had Scindian ferocity been available in aid of it. What men could do would have been done; but the day of miracles has gone by. In this point of view India may have been preserved to us by the heroism of Napier. Be this as it may, however, there can be no doubt that we owe to him the possession of a mighty realm, first conquered by his generalship, and then (more arduous task) conciliated by his wisdom. He wears the double wreath of the laurel and the olive. Great as has been his military triumph, we are disposed to postpone it to his victo ries of peace. What the sword has gained for England in the East, moral opinion can alone preserve. Far, far above the meed of mightiest conquest does that fame aspire which has earned the noble and eloquent panegyric of Lord Ellenborough at the Cheltenham banquet. 'There never,' says the noble chairman, has been, is, or will be, any name so great as his in Scinde, because no name but his is associated with justice-justice to all men in the execution of the most unlimited power and authority. In the state, no quality excites so much admiration as justice, because it is of all qualities the most rare to be found in association with absolute power. My gallant friend had absolute power in Scinde, and no man has imputed to him one act of injustice in the exercise of it. My gallant friend had every opportunity of obliging friends, of doing that which I regret to say is most conducive to the gaining of a great name in this country. He disdained them all-he left Scinde without having perpetrated a single job, having on all occasions selected, to the best of his judgment, the men best fitted to perform the duty required by the public service. Gentlemen, I can tell you more; I can tell you that the very men my gal lant friend subdued, joyfully became his subjects and cultivators under him, and there are now no men in Scinde more contented under the government of this country than the very men who immigrated into Scinde after being subdued by him on hills. I desire no better proof of the excellence of his administration and government.' Nor can any one. Sir Charles Napier justly boasted of such a panegyric coming from such a man. We regret to observe that he consoled himself by it for the neglect he experienced from other quarters. It is a disgrace and scandal to the age in which we live, that such a man should have just cause for such a complaint. We have no doubt that, as the equally neglected Picton said, 'If the coronet lay in a battery he would not be the last to find it.""

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-AGENT TO THE PENINSULAR AND ORIENTAL STEAM COMPANY-MALAY REGIMENT-TOWN OF GALLE-ROYAL HOTEL-MAIL-COACH OFFICE-PROPRIETOR.

"HIP, hip, hip, hurrah!—now one cheer more here's your health, Lewis -here's to you, old boy-here's good luck to you in all you undertake."

These, and such-like exclamations, came from a merry, vociferous set of fellows, who were assembled around the cuddy-table of the "Hindostan," which had just dropped anchor in the harbour of Point de Galle, having completed her voyage from Suez, waiting at Galle to take in coal, and land passengers. These gentlemen were drinking the health of her commander, Captain Samuel Lewis, as jolly, open-hearted a sailor, as any need wish to make a voyage with.

"Thank you, gentlemen," replied the aforesaid captain, "for all your good wishes; and I am glad that your voyage has been a pleasant one.

I,

in return, now drink to the health and success of all present, and may you return home with as many lacs of rupees as you desire, and with sound livers."

"And no bad wish is the last," said a saffron-faced Anglo-Indian, who was returning to the scene of his labours and gains, and whose complexion contrasted strangely with the fresh, ruddy hue of those who had just left Europe; "but take care, my boys, that in the search after the lacs of rupees, you do not find a grave, or disorder your livers with brandy pawaee, prawn curry, and whiskey toddy."

"Now, gentlemen," said the skipper, "one glass more, and then the song, and then to our berths, as I suppose those who remain in the Cinnamon Isle' will be up betimes to-morrow morning; for as soon as I have sent

VOL. XXXII-NO. CXCI.

these passengers on shore, and coaled, I up anchor, and off to Calcutta."

The extra glass was drank all round, and we will leave them singing

"Fill the bumper fair,

Every drop we sprinkle O'er the brow of care,

Smooths away a wrinkle"---

all joining in the chorus in a most energetically stentorian manner, for the especial benefit and edification of the lady passengers.

In

Now, as we intended to amuse our readers, "Delectando pariterque monendo," we will give a description of the Harbour of Point de Galle, which lies at the southern point of the island of Ceylon, and is surrounded by rocks, broken by the dashing of surge, and worn by the hand of Time into many fantastic and picturesque forms. the back ground are cocoa-nut trees, with their towering, stately, but slender trunks, their elongated, graceful leaves, in a canopied form, confined to the summit of the tree, and drooping elegantly on either side, as the breeze wantons amidst them. Clusters of nuts of an oval shape, measuring from seventeen to twenty inches in diameter, grow amongst the leaves, close to the trunk of the tree; these being of a green less vivid than the brilliant colouring of the leaves, contrast beautifully with the subdued hue of the brown bark of the trunk. Mingled with these stately trees is the bread-fruit tree, with its umbrageous foliage, and enormous leaves, of an emerald-green colour, from the branches of which hang the large, round fruit, presenting to the visual organ the magnificent ma2 Q

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