9. Lord Dalhousie then drew up a scheme for laying down 4000 miles of rails between the great centres of population and the seats of government. And he succeeded in getting the necessary capital for this vast undertaking by offering it to public companies with the guarantee, on the part of the Indian Government, of a fair profit on their outlay. So great was the success of this scheme that in the course of the next quarter-century £100,000,000 were spent on Indian railways.
10. It would not be easy to overrate the importance of railways in this vast country, in the interests both of Britain and India. They form so many iron bands to unite the scattered provinces under British rule, and to enable our military forces to be sent speedily to any threatened quarter. They also serve to bring supplies to districts suffering from famine, whereas in former times it often happened that people in one part of India were dying for want of the food that was stored up in rich abundance in some distant part. The advantages that the railways offer to trade are still more important. "Great tracts," wrote Dalhousie, "are teeming with produce they cannot dispose of. Others are scantily bearing what they would carry in abundance, if only it could be conveyed whither it is needed.... Ships from every part of the world crowd our ports in search of produce which we have, or could obtain in the interior, but which at present we cannot profitably fetch to them." So great an impulse was given to trade in the course of the seven years of Lord Dalhousie's rule, that the export of raw cotton was doubled and that of grain increased threefold, whilst the total annual exports rose from thirteen millions to twenty-three.
11. The great viceroy also, meanwhile, set in action a scheme for binding all India together by a network of telegraph wires. In the last two years of his rule, no less than 4000 miles of electric telegraph were put in working order. The difficulties to be overcome were very great. The wires had to be carried on bamboo poles, or on pillars of stone and iron, over broad swamps and rocky wastes, through dense and deadly jungles, up wild mountain steeps, across deep gorges, and seventy large rivers. And all this had to be done in spite of the depredations of white ants, wild beasts, and half-civilised men. A famous writer thus describes the difficulties the engineers had to contend with:
12. "His posts had to pass through jungles, where wild beasts used them for scratching-stations, and savages stole them for firewood and rafters for huts. Inquisitive monkeys spoiled the work by dragging the wires into festoons, or dangling an ill-conducting tail from wire to wire. Crows, kites, and fishing-eagles made roosting-places of the wires in numbers so great as to bring them to the ground; though once or twice a flash of lightning, striking a wet wire, would strew the ground with the carcases of the feathered trespassers by dozens. The white ant nibbled galleries in the posts, and the porcupine burrowed under them."
13. It is owing to the telegraph that all India is held under the control of the governor-general. The wires are as the nerves that pass through the whole body of India and terminate, as it were, in his hands. By their means the latest news reaches him from every part of India, and by the same means he flashes back his commands. In the great mutiny that broke out, at the close of Dalhousie's term of office, it was the telegraph that saved us from many a disaster. "It is that accursed string that strangles us," exclaimed a mutineer pointing to the telegraph wire as he was led out to execution.
(India).
1. The story of India cannot be told without frequent reference to war. Though the Marquis of Dalhousie was so much occupied, as we have seen, with the arts of peace, he was obliged to wage more than one great war. On landing at Calcutta (1848) he was told by the last governor-general that so far as human foresight could predict, "it would not be necessary to fire a gun in India for seven years to come." Yet, within a twelvemonth, the whole scene was changed.
2. The Punjab, or Land of the Five Rivers, was inhabited by the Sikhs, a brave and warlike people. They had already fought desperately for the mastery of India and had been defeated. A British army had marched into Lahore, their capital, and dictated terms of peace, by which the Sikhs were left under the rule of a native prince, but required to receive a British officer at the royal court and to be guided by his advice. Dalhousie had scarcely been in office six months when the Punjab was all aflame again, and he found himself compelled to renew the war. "I have wished for peace," he said, "I have striven for it. But untaught by experience, the Sikh nation has called for war, and on my word, sirs, they shall have it with a vengeance."
3. The work that lay before the British army was a terribly difficult one. After a trying campaign in which we came near defeat, the two armies met for a decisive encounter at Gujerat. It ended in the rout of the Sikhs, who fled in dismay, leaving behind them most of their guns and standards, their ammunition, stores, and tents. The defeated troops were never allowed to rally, and within three weeks the last gun had been abandoned and the last soldier had laid down his arms. The Sikhs cheerfully owned themselves beaten, and heard with delight that their Afghan allies "had ridden down through their hills like lions and ran back into them like dogs."