Twelve Years Of A Soldier's Life In India Part 9

SUBATHOO, _August, 1847_.

I have some hopes, though but faint ones, of being relieved from the necessity of a move to Cawnpore, [whither his regiment had been ordered,] by obtaining a berth under Colonel Lawrence. I know that he has asked for me, and, I believe, for an appointment which would please me more than any other he could find, as being one of the most confidential nature, and involving constant locomotion, and plenty of work both for head, nerve, and body. But I must not be sanguine, as we have already a large proportion of officers away from the regiment, and I am a young soldier, though, alas! growing grievously old in years.

The appointment alluded to was to the "Corps of Guides," then recently organized by Colonel Lawrence for service in the Punjaub. While this question, however, was still pending, there seemed a prospect of Lieut. Hodson's succeeding to the adjutancy of his regiment, and Colonel Lawrence, as will be seen from the subjoined letter, recommended his accepting it, if offered:--

"SIMLA, _Sept. 11th_.

"MY DEAR HODSON,--I have spoken to the Governor-General about you, who at once replied, 'Let him take the adjutancy.' He wishes you well, but is puzzled by the absentee question. We are all, moreover, agreed on the usefulness to yourself of being employed for a time as adjutant to a regiment. There are always slips, but I know of no man of double or treble your standing who has so good a prospect before him. Favor and partiality do occasionally give a man a lift, but depend upon it that _his_ is the best chance in the long run who helps himself. So far you have done this manfully, and you have reason to be proud of being selected at one time for three different appointments by three different men.[4] Don't however, be too proud. Learn your duties thoroughly. Continue to study two or three hours a day; not to pa.s.s in a hurry, but that you may do so two or three years hence with _eclat_. Take advantage of Becher's being at Kussowlee to learn something of surveying. All knowledge is useful; but to a soldier, or official of any sort in India, I know no branch of knowledge which so well repays the student.

"In Oriental phrase, pray consider that much is said in this hurried scrawl, and believe that I shall watch your career with warm interest.

"I am, very sincerely yours, "H. M. LAWRENCE."

The expected vacancy, however, did not occur, and Colonel Lawrence accordingly renewed his application for my brother's services in the Punjaub, and, as will be seen, with success. In the beginning of October he writes:--

I have every reason to expect that before many days I shall be gazetted as attached to the Guide Corps. The immediate result of my appointment will be a speedy departure to Lah.o.r.e with Colonel Lawrence, who returns there to arrange matters before going home.

And on the 16th:--

You will, I am sure, rejoice with me at my unprecedented good fortune in being appointed to a responsible and honorable post, almost before, by the rules of the service, I am ent.i.tled to take charge of a company of Sepoys. I shall even be better off than I thought; instead of merely "doing duty" with the Guide Corps, I am to be the second in command.

The next chapter will show how well Lieut. Hodson justified Colonel Lawrence's selection of him for so responsible a command, one which the course of events made far more important than could then have been foreseen. It was in this that he laid the foundations of his reputation as an "unequalled partisan leader," and acquired his experience of the Sikhs, and extraordinary influence over them.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] At this very juncture, the Adjutant-General of the army had also applied for Lieut. Hodson.

CHAPTER IV.

EMPLOYMENT IN THE PUNJAUB AS SECOND IN COMMAND OF THE CORPS OF GUIDES, AND ALSO AS a.s.sISTANT TO THE RESIDENT AT LAh.o.r.e.

_From October, 1847, during the Campaign of 1848-9, to the Annexation of the Punjaub in March, 1849._

CAMP, KUSSOOR, _Nov. 15th, 1847_.

I almost forget the many events that have happened since I wrote last. I believe I was "at home" in my snug little cottage in Subathoo, and now I am in a high queer-looking native house among the ruins of this old stronghold of the Pathans; with orders "to make a good road from Lah.o.r.e to the Sutlej, distance forty miles," in as brief a s.p.a.ce as possible. On the willing-to-be-generally-useful principle this is all very well, and one gets used to turning one's hand to everything, but certainly (but for "circ.u.mstances over which I had no control") I always labored under the impression that I knew nothing at all about the matter.

However, Colonel Lawrence walked into my room promiscuously one morning, and said, "Oh, Hodson, we have agreed that you must take in hand the road to Ferozepoor,--you can start in a day or two;" and _here I am_. Well, I have galloped across the country hither and thither, and peered into distances with telescopes, and inquired curiously into abstruse (and obtuse) angles, rattled Gunter's chains, and consulted compa.s.ses and theodolites, till I have an idea of a road that will astonish the natives not a little. Last night I was up half the night, looking out for fires which I had ordered to be lighted in sundry places along the line of the Sutlej at a fixed hour, that I might find the nearest point.

This morning, I had a grand a.s.sembly of village "punches,"

to discuss with them the propriety of furnis.h.i.+ng able-bodied men for the work. By a little artful persuasion, I succeeded in raising 700 from a small district, and am going onwards to hold another such "county meeting" to-morrow. The mode and fas.h.i.+on that has always obtained in public works under native governments, has been to give an order to seize _all_ the inhabitants, and make them work,--_and not pay them then_. These gentry, therefore, have been so bullied by their Sikh masters, that they hardly believe my offers of ready-money payments. My predecessor, an artillery officer, who came here on the same errand, was turned off for resorting to violent measures in his anxiety to get hold of workmen, having hung some of the head men up by the heels to trees _till they were convinced_. He got no good (nor hands either) by his dodge. So I was sent here on the other persuasion, and you will be glad to hear, for the credit of the family, that I am gammoning the dear old punches most deliciously. They'd give me anything, bless their innocent hearts! when I get under the village tree with them, or by the village well, and discourse eloquently on the blessing to society of having destroyed the Sikhs, and on the lightness of their land-tax. I hope to be relieved in a month, and go up to Peshawur to join "the Guides," for this is cruelly hard work, and I have had enough for one year of native work-people. Besides, I am not strong yet, and have a horrid cold. I would give anything to be able to sit down and read a book quietly, a luxury I have not enjoyed for many a long day. Colonel Lawrence starts for England on the 30th for two years. I hope you will contrive to see him, and make his acquaintance. Sir F. Currie is to be his successor during his absence.

_December 1st._

I have been at Lah.o.r.e to receive Colonel Lawrence's parting instructions, and say good-bye to him, poor fellow. He is a genuinely kind-hearted mortal, and has been a brother to me ever since I knew him. I hope to see him back in two years, invigorated and renewed, to carry out the good work which he has so n.o.bly begun.

_To his Sister._

CAMP, KUSSOOR, _Dec. 15th, 1847_.

Your letter met me on my road two days ago, and emerged from the folds of a Sikh horseman's turban, to my great delight.

I got off my horse, and walked along, driving him before me till I had read the packet. You must not conclude, because I am writing to you a second time from this place, that I have been here ever since I first commenced operations in these parts. I have been twice to Lah.o.r.e, and several times to various intermediate and more distant places, since then. In short, you may give up all idea of being able to imagine where I may be at any given time. My work has progressed considerably. In three weeks I have collected and got into working order upwards of a thousand most unwilling laborers, surveyed and marked out some twenty miles of road through a desert and forest, and made a very large piece of it. I am happy to say I am to be relieved in a day or two, and sent to survey another district. I have had one or two visitors the last few days, and therefore not been so lonely as usual; but my time has been even more than ever occupied.

My duties are nearly as various as there are hours in the day; at one time digging a trench, at another time investigating breaches of the peace. I am a sort of justice of the peace for general purposes, and have to listen to and inquire into complaints, and send cases which I think worthy of it for trial to Lah.o.r.e. I caught as neat a case of robbing and murder the other day as ever graced Stafford a.s.sizes; to say nothing of endless modes of theft, more or less open, according to the wealth or power of the stealer.

This is the most remarkable scene of ruin I have met with for many a long day; erst, a nest of the abodes of wealthy Pathan n.o.bles, and now a desert tract, of many miles in extent, covered with ruins, with here and there a dome, or cupola, or minaret, to mark what has once been.

I am happy to say that I have succeeded in obtaining a respite on Sundays. Hitherto, all the works I have had in hand have gone on the same every day, and consequently one's annoyance and responsibility continued equally on Sundays.

This is happily put an end to, and I shall have one day's rest a week at least, to say nothing of higher considerations. An order on the subject was issued six months ago, but great difficulties were in the way of its execution.

CAMP, DEENANUGGUR, _Jan. 15th, 1848_.

Here I am off again like a steam-engine, calling at a series of stations, puffing and panting, hither and thither, never resting, ever starting; now in a cutting, now in a tunnel; first in a field, next on a hill: thus pa.s.ses day after day, week after week, a great deal of work going through one's hands, and yet one can give very little account of one's self at the end of it. At present I am moving rapidly along the banks of a small ca.n.a.l which traverses the Doab, between the Ravee and Beas rivers, for purposes of irrigation; accompanying Major Napier,[5] to whom the prosecution of all public improvements throughout the Land of the Five Rivers belongs. We (the "Woods and Forests" of the day) have nearly reached the point where the river debouches from the hills, and have put up for the day in a little garden-house of Runjeet Singh's, in the midst of a lovely grove of great extent, through whose dark-green boughs we have a splendid panorama of the snowy range to back our horizon. We have great projects of extending the ca.n.a.l by various branches to feed and fertilize the whole extent of the Doab, which wants nothing but water to make it a garden, so fertile is the soil. We have come along a strip of beautiful country, richly cultivated, lying along the banks of this life-giving little watercourse, and the weather is perfect, so I am as happy as mere externals can make one. Certainly we whose lot has fallen on this side of India, are much to be envied.

Here, all day long, one rides about, clothed as warmly, and even more so, than in England at this season, enjoying the bright clear suns.h.i.+ne, and never troubled with thinking of the sun; whilst at Calcutta they are running into their houses at nine o'clock to avoid the heat of the day! I imagine two years in Calcutta would be more _wearing_ than ten up here; by the same token, I have achieved the respectable weight of eleven stone ten pounds, being an increase of seventeen pounds since July. May my shadow never be less!

I live from the arrival of one mail in expectation of the next. I had meant to have written a long series of despatches for this opportunity, and have asked you to do some commissions for me, but I must postpone it now to another time, as Major Napier has lots of work for me. I want a pair of thick blankets; mine were plundered at Ferozeshah, and I have always mourned over them since, when cold nights and long marches come together. In these far countries it is next to impossible to get anything decent.

CAMP, RAJA KE BaGH, _Jan. 29th, 1848_.

For some days I was staying in, and intend returning again to, a fine picturesque old castle or fort built by the Emperor Shahjehan. Its lofty walls, with their turrets and battlements, inclose a quadrangle of the size of the great court of Trinity, while from the centre rises a dark ma.s.s of buildings three stories high, forming the keep; presenting externally four blank walls pierced with loopholes, but within, arches and pillars and galleries, with an open s.p.a.ce in the centre, in which they all face. The summit rises sixty-four feet, which, in addition to the great elevation of the mound on which the castle stands, gives a n.o.ble view of mountain, river, and plain, covered with the finest timber and green with young corn; the whole backed by range on range, peak after peak, of dazzling snow. Another, nearly similar, lies about ten miles to the north, and I am now "pitched" at the foot of a third to the west; all monuments of the taste and grandeur of the Mogul Emperors. That Goth, Runjeet Singh, and his followers have as much to answer for in their way, as Cromwell and his crop-eared scoundrels in England and Ireland. They seem only to have conquered to destroy,--every public work, every castle, road, serai, or avenue, has been destroyed; the finest mosques turned into powder magazines and stables, the gardens into cantonments, and the fields into deserts. I had a pretty specimen the other day of the way in which things have been managed here.

I was desired to examine into, and report on, the accounts of revenue collected hitherto in 180 villages along the "Shah Nahr," or Royal Ca.n.a.l. By a convenient mixture of coaxing and threats, compliment and invective, a return was at last effected, by which it appeared that in ordinary cases about one half the revenue reached the treasury, in some one third, and in one district _nothing_! To my great amus.e.m.e.nt, when I came to this point, the gallant collector (a long-bearded old Sikh) quietly remarked,--"Yes, Sahib, this was indeed a great place for us entirely." I said, "Yes, you villain, you gentry grew fat on robbing your master." "Don't call it robbing," he said; "I a.s.sure you I wouldn't be dishonest for the world. I never took more than my predecessors did before me." About the most _nave_ definition of honesty I have had the luck to meet with. I fancy our visit to these nooks and corners of the Punjaub has added some 50,000_l._ a year to the revenue. My present _role_ is to survey a part of the country lying along the left bank of the Ravee and below the hills, and I am daily and all day at work with compa.s.ses and chain, pen and pencil, following streams, diving into valleys, burrowing into hills, to complete my work. I need hardly remark, that having never attempted anything of the kind hitherto, it is bothering at first. But one is compelled to be patient under this sort of insult, and I should not be surprised any day to be told to build a s.h.i.+p, compose a code of laws, or hold a.s.sizes;--in fact, 'tis the way in India; every one has to teach himself his work, and do it at the same time; if I go on learning new trades as fast during the remainder of my career as I have done at its commencement, I shall have to retire as a Jacksonian professor at least, when "my dog has had his day." Well! I have fairly beaten the cold this time,--I turned back one side of the tent, and had a big fire lighted outside, protected from draughts by a canvas screen, and the whole tent is now in a jolly glow; a gypsy light reflected on the trees around, and on the two tall picturesque Affghans who, seated cross-legged on each side of the fire, either replenish it with sticks, fan it into a flame, or watch my pen with the large, black, inquisitive eye of a dog looking out for a crust.

They make much better servants for wandering folks like myself than the Hindostanee servant-tribe, have fewer or no prejudices, (save against clean water,) and trudge along the livelong day as merrily as if life was a joke to them, instead of the dull heavy reality it is.[6]

_Feb. 27th, 1848._

I really have very little to tell you of my new Guide Corps duties from the somewhat strange fact that I have never yet actually entered upon them; this will soon come to an end, however, as I have directions to proceed to Peshawur as soon as the survey I have been at work on is completed. The grand object of the corps is to train a body of men in peace to be efficient in war; to be not only acquainted with localities, roads, rivers, hills, ferries, and pa.s.ses, but have a good idea of the produce and supplies available in any part of the country; to give _accurate_ information, not running open-mouthed to say that 10,000 hors.e.m.e.n and a thousand guns are coming, (in true native style,) but to stop to see whether it may not be really only a common cart and a few wild hors.e.m.e.n who are kicking up all the dust; to call twenty-five by its right name, and not say _fifty_ for short, as most natives do. This of course wants a great deal of careful instruction and attention. Beyond this, the officers should give a tolerably correct sketch and report of any country through which they may pa.s.s, be _au fait_ at routes and means of feeding troops, and above all (and here you come close upon practical duties) keep an eye on the doings "of the neighbors" and the state of the country, so as to be able to give such information as may lead to any outbreak being nipped in the bud. This is the _theory_, what the _practice_ may be I'll tell you some day or other when I know. Hitherto I have been making myself generally useful under the chief engineer, and learning to survey. One has to turn one's hand to everything if one wishes to get on.

Meanwhile, I am busily collecting every species of information about the people and the land they live in. Hard work and fatigue, of course, but a splendid opening and opportunity for making one's self known and _necessary_.

DEENANUGGUR, _March 14th, 1848_.

The night your letter reached me, Napier (our chief engineer) and I were encamped on a spur of gra.s.s land separating two streams of the river "Chukkir," and had been so for some days. That evening it began to rain, (if a sluice of water, apparently _struck down from the heavens_ by a flood of the fiercest lightning, can be called so,) and for thirty-six hours the torrent descended without intermission, as only Asiatic storms can descend. At length a pause ensued, and the sky was visible, and we emerged from our sodden tents only to be threatened with water in a worse form. The hills, valleys, and mountains began to send down to us what they had so plentifully received from above, and the hitherto quiet stream, whose wide stony channel surrounded us, was in a single hour a powerful torrent, tearing over the country as if to prove what it could do. By one of the singular freaks common to all tropical rivers, it dammed up one of its own widest outlets by the quant.i.ty of stones which it brought along with it, and came tearing down the one nearest to us. Across this, not a hundred yards from our tents, we had just built a powerful breakwater some sixteen feet wide, but the water quietly walked over, under, and round it; roared, groaned, stormed, and swelled angrily for two hours, and our breakwater was a "thing of history;"

meantime, we were gradually getting more and more surrounded with water, it rose and rose until only four inches were wanting to set us well afloat. The pegs of my tent-ropes were undermined, and a notice to quit was as plainly written on the face of the water as ever on a legal process. There was but one way of escape, so mustering the whole of a neighboring village, we loaded all our valuables and movables on their backs, and made a dash at the hamlet. Once having succeeded in turning us out, the valiant Chukkir was content, and we slept in our tents as usual, but not without, as it turned out, considerable risk of finding ourselves landed in some unknown field on waking.

When this flood subsided, it appeared that the scene of our unfortunate dam had become the deepest part of the channel, and the old course choked with stones and boulders which you and I couldn't lift in a week of Sundays. Is not this an incident?

Since I wrote last, in consequence of representations I sent to head-quarters as to the amount of plundering going on, a large party of horse, with one of the princ.i.p.al chiefs, was sent out here, with directions to act on the information I gave them. We have, accordingly, had a robber-hunt on a large and tolerably successful scale. Numbers have been caught. One shot _pour encourager les autres_, and we have traces of others, so that my quiet practice (originally for my own amus.e.m.e.nt and information) has been very useful to the State. I found out the greatest part of it by sending clever fellows disguised as "faqueers" (you know what they are, I think;--religious beggars) to the different villages to talk to the people and learn their doings. Some of the stories of Sikh violence, cruelty, and treachery which I have picked up are almost beyond belief. The indifference of these people to human life is something appalling. I could hardly get them to give a thought or attempt an inquiry as to the ident.i.ty of a man whom I found dead, evidently by violence, by the roadside yesterday morning; and they were horrified at the thought of tying up or confining a sacred ox, who had gored his _thirteenth_ man the evening before last! They told me plainly that no one had a right to complain of being hurt by so venerable a beast.