LETTER XLVIII.
Your Letter, occasioned by the account of my shipwreck and subsequent disaster, gave me, my amiable boy! as great pleasure as those disasters gave me pain. Your account, too, of John’s bursting into tears on the reading of it to him, had almost a similar effect upon myself: and I trust in the Almighty Disposer of Events, that that excellent turn of mind will be so fashioned by the education I give you, as to make it the source of boundless gratification and true greatness (by which I mean goodness) here, and of never-fading felicity hereafter. You say you cannot account for it, but you found more happiness at my escape, than misery at my misfortunes. I hail that circumstance as the strongest mark of perfect excellence of disposition. A great Moral Philosopher has laid it down as a maxim, that it is the surer mark of a good heart to sympathise with joy than with sorrow; and this instance only comes in aid of that opinion of you which my fond hopes have always nourished.
At the same time I must declare to you, that my pleasure at escaping shipwreck was by no means as great as the agony my mind underwent at the prospect now before me was poignant. I have already said; and indeed with truth, that I should have with much greater pleasure embraced death: I, who had been already some years in India, and had opportunities of hearing, as well from my Father as from other Officers in the Service, what the disposition of the Tyrant in whose power I had now fallen was, knew too well the horrors of my situation to feel anything like hope. The unmerciful disposition of Hyder, and all those in authority under him, and the cruel policy of the Eastern Chiefs, making the life of any one, particularly a British prisoner, at the best a precarious tenure, I did not know the moment when death might be inflicted upon me with perhaps a thousand aggravating circumstances: and at all events, the affairs which demanded my presence in India so very importunately as to urge me to all the fatigues and hardships of a passage over land, were, of themselves, sufficient to make my mind uneasy; but the abject state of want and nakedness in which it seemed I was likely to remain, struck a deep and damp horror to my heart, and almost unman’d me.
Mr. Hall and I, however, endeavoured with all our might to stem the headlong torrent of our fate——Melancholy preyed deeply and openly upon him, while I concealed mine, and endeavoured to cheer the sinking spirits of that noble youth, who, I perceived, was the prey rather of extreme sensibility than feebleness of mind. All the horrors of shivering nakedness, though, to a mind delicate like his, and a person reared in the lap of luxury, sufficiently goading, appeared as nothing when compared with one loss he had sustained in the depredations with which shipwreck is constantly followed up. In the cruel suspense between life and death, which I have already described, previous to my getting on shore, this amiable young man had secured and treasured next his heart, as the inseparable companion of his fate, a miniature portrait of a young Lady: it hung round his neck, and was, by the unfeeling villains who seized him on his landing, taken away. This cruel deprivation was an incessant corrosive to his mind——the copious source of anguish to his heart——the hourly theme of the most pathetic, afflicting exclamations. “Had I,” he would cry, “oh! had I had but the good fortune to have gone to the bottom while yet it hung about my neck, I should have been happy: but now, separated from the heavenly original, and bereft of the precious image, what is life? what would be life were I yet sure of it? What pleasure, what common content, has the world left for me? None——oh! none, none! Never shall this heart again know comfort!”
I did every thing I could to console him, and, as far as I could, prevent him from dwelling on those gloomy subjects. Our conversations were interesting and pathetic; but, alas! the picture, at every pause, chased away the slight impressions of the preceding converse: no sufferings of the body could countervail that loss——no consolation mitigate it; and amidst the horrid reflections which unparalleled calamity imposed upon his mind, the loss of that one dear relic rose paramount to all——and as every thought began, so it ended, with the picture.
For some days we lay in this place, exposed to the weather, without even the slender comfort of a little straw to cover the ground beneath us——our food, boiled rice, served very sparingly twice a-day by an old woman, who just threw a handful or more of it to each upon a very dirty board, which we devoured with those spoons Nature gave us.
At the end of that time, we, and, along with us, the Lascars, were ordered to proceed into the country, and drove on foot to a considerable distance, in order to render up an account of ourselves to persons belonging to Government, authorised to take it. It was advanced in the morning when we moved, without receiving any sort of sustenance; and were marched in that wasting climate eight hours, without breaking our fast; during which time we were exposed alternately to the scorching heat of the sun and heavy torrents of rain, which raised painful blisters on our skin: we had often to stand exposed to the weather, or to lie down, under the pressure of fatigue and weakness, on the bare ground; then wait an hour, or more, at the door of some insolent, unfeeling monster, until he finished his dinner, or took his afternoon’s nap; and when this was over, drove forward with wanton barbarity by the people who attended us.
You, my Frederick! who only know the mild and merciful disposition of the People of Great Britain, where government, religion, and long habit, have reduced charity and benevolence so completely to a system that they seem to be innate principles of the mind, can have no conception of a People who will not only look upon the worst human afflictions with indifference, but take a savage delight in the miseries of their fellow-creatures, even where no possible advantage can be reaped from their inhumanity, and where the only reward they can propose to themselves for their cruelty is the pleasure of contemplating human sufferings.
Such, sorry am I to say it, is the disposition of some parts of the East Indies that I have been in: and although those parts under the dominion of Great Britain owe their emancipation from the most galling yokes to the English——and though, under their auspices, they live in a state of greater happiness than ever they did, and greater freedom even than Britons themselves——yet such is the wicked ingratitude of many of them, such the inflexible animosity arising from a contradictory religion, that the death or suffering of an Englishman, or any misfortune that may befal him, often serves only as matter of sport or amusement to them. It would be well if it rested there——but unfortunately they are worse again; for in general they have the like coldness and indifference, or indeed, to speak more properly, the like aversion, to each other’s good; and the same diabolical principles of selfishness and treachery pervade the greater number in those vast regions, almost boundless in extent, and almost matchless in fertility.
Two days after this, we were moved again, and marched up the country by a long and circuitous route, in which we underwent every hardship that cruelty could inflict, or human fortitude endure——now blistered with the heat, now drenched with the rain, and now chilled with the night damps——destitute of any place but the bare earth to rest or lay our heads on, with only a scanty pittance of boiled rice for our support——often without water to quench our thirst, and constantly goaded by the guards, who pricked us with their bayonets every now and then, at once to evince their power, entertain the spectators, and mortify us. We arrived at Hydernagur, the metropolis of the province of Biddanore——a fort of considerable strength, mounting upwards of seventy guns, containing a large garrison of men, and possessed of immense wealth.
It was about two o’clock in the morning when we arrived at Biddanore: the day was extremely hot, and we were kept out under the full heat of that broiling sun till six o’clock in the evening, before we were admitted to an audience of the Jemadar, or Governor of the place, without having a mouthful of victuals offered to us after the fatiguing march of the morning.
While we stood in this forlorn state, a vast concourse of people collected about, and viewed us with curiosity. Looking round through those who stood nearest, I observed some men gazing at me with strong marks of emotion, and a mixture of wonder and concern pourtrayed in their countenances. Surprised to see such symptoms of humanity in a Mysorian Indian, I looked at them with more scrutinizing attention, and thought that their faces were familiar to me. Catching my eye, they looked at me significantly, as though they would express their regard and respect for me, if they dared; and I then began to recollect that they were formerly privates in my regiment of cavalry, and were then prisoners at large with Hyder.
I was not less surprised that those poor fellows should recognise me in my present miserable fallen state, than affected at the sympathetic feeling they disclosed. I returned their look with a private nod of recognition; but, seeing that they were afraid to speak to me, and fearing I might injure them by disclosing our acquaintance, I forbore any thing more. The guilty souls of despotic Governments are perpetually alive to suspicion: every look alarms them; and alarm or suspicion never fails to be followed up with proscription or death.
Men, when in the fullness of power and pride of office, very seldom give themselves time to reflect upon the instability of human greatness, and the uncertainty of earthly contingencies. When, invested with all the trappings of authority, I commanded the regiment to which those poor fellows belonged, I would have thought that he spoke wildly indeed who would have alledged that it was possible I could ever become an object of their pity——that I should stand naked and degraded before them, and they be afraid to acknowledge me: but, though I should have thought so then, it was yet some comfort to me, when that unfortunate event did come to pass, to reflect, that, when in power, I made such use of it as to excite emotions in their bosoms of affection and respect. Did the tyrant and overbearing insolent Chiefs consider this, and govern themselves by its instructions, they would go into the field with the consoling reflection, that no gun would be levelled at their head except that of the common enemy——a thing that does not always happen.