This vast area of country comprises almost every variety of physical configuration—lofty mountains and low hills; well-cultivated, alluvial plains, arid deserts, great forests, marshy swamps and dense jungles; long, broad rivers, numerous hill torrents, wide and deep nullahs. The varieties of climate to be found in this great continent are also numerous; for while the plains of Upper India are for several months parched up with a fiery heat, the summits of the Himalayahs are covered with perpetual snow; and while the rainfall of Sindh seldom exceeds four or five inches annually, there is a place in Assam called Cherra Poonjee, well known to geographers as the rainiest place on the earth’s surface, the annual fall amounting to 650 inches.
The popular idea of India is that it is an extremely hot country, and speaking generally, the popular idea is correct. But the nights in Northern India are often excessively cold, and I have many times seen ice half an inch thick on the roadside puddles in the Punjab, while the hill stations at Simla, Mussorie, and elsewhere, 7000 feet above the sea level, are covered with snow in January and February.
In Upper India, the part with which I am best acquainted, we enjoy a climate which for four months in the year—November, December, January, and February—is probably unequalled in the world both for health and pleasure: bright skies, a sun hot indeed, yet not too hot for exercise all day long, and nights cold, dry, and bracing, with a clear, still atmosphere, make an almost perfect climate. In October, March, and April, the mornings, evenings, and nights are still delightful, though the heat out of doors in the daytime is great. For the remaining five months, the climate, to a European at least, is simply detestable. You have either fierce hot winds like the blast from a glass furnace, with clouds of dust; or else a moist, stagnant atmosphere like that of a continuous vapour bath, and excessively depressing. The nights are rather worse than the days, and life is only bearable inside large and lofty rooms and under swinging punkahs. In Southern India, there is less extreme heat, but more moisture, and no real cold weather.
Yet the climate, with proper precautions and temperate habits, is by no means unfavourable to the European constitution, except in peculiar cases. As a rule, men now return from India looking much the same as their English contemporaries, and those whose minds are well employed and whose bodies get a fair share of exercise, are as healthy as their fellow-countrymen whose lot is cast in England or the Colonies. Out of eight Engineer officers who left Chatham with me twenty-three years ago to go to India, six are now alive, and five out of the six are strong, healthy men. Nor is this at all an exceptional case; indeed, when an Anglo-Indian reaches a certain age he seems to live for ever, though the popular idea that this is because the Indian sun has dried him up into a mummy, is not founded on fact.
If I were asked whether India was a very beautiful country, I should reply that in general it is not, but that it has some of the finest scenery in the world. In travelling up the main line of railway, for instance, from Calcutta to Peshawur, your road lies for 1000 miles of that distance over a country that is one dead level, without even a hillock to break the monotony. If your journey is made (say) in March, as far as the eye can reach it rests on an enormous sea of wheat, diversified by groves of mangoe trees, and mud villages, or brick-built towns. No crystal streams,—no clear lakes,—no undulating downs,—no parks or country houses,—not even a grass field. Yet the rich cultivation, and the general signs of prosperity amongst the dense population are at least pleasing to the philanthropist; and if we leave the railway at Umballa and travel for forty miles eastward, we find ourselves amongst the dark pine forests, the mountain torrents, and the craggy heights of the Himalayahs, while their gigantic tops covered with eternal snow, 10,000 feet higher than “the monarch of mountains,” look down upon us in their calm and solemn grandeur.
Nor are the great forests and mountain ranges of Central India without much beauty; while the magnificent harbour of Bombay and other sea views on the coast show that India is not wanting in many of the charms of marine landscape.
But it is time that I should speak of [the people] of the country. Those who have never been in India often form their ideas, (very naturally), from the few natives of India they have met in this country; but these are a small and very peculiar class, and are by no means fair specimens, not merely of the whole population, but even of their own province.
Let me, however, at once give you a few figures, which will show how unsafe it is to generalize from a few instances. India is inhabited by about 200 millions of people, speaking at least eleven totally distinct languages, and innumerable dialects, and differing amongst each other in features, character, and social customs, quite as much as the Russian or Spaniard does from the Englishman.
As, therefore, I have told you not to form a judgment of the whole from a few isolated and exceptional instances, I shall avoid falling into the same error, and only talk about the races with which I am personally acquainted.
The Bengalees, i.e. the inhabitants of Bengal proper, have been those who have benefited most intellectually by their contact with the English. They are quick-witted and clever; many are excellent English scholars, and make admirable clerks and accountants. Many have risen to high positions in the public service: one sits on the Bench as a Judge of the High Court; several have come to England and fairly won their place in the Indian Civil Service, in competition with Englishmen. But no Bengalee serves in the army, or enters into any pursuit or amusement from choice which requires bodily activity and strength: his physical organization is of the feeblest; for centuries he has been ruled by the stronger races from the North, and it is to be feared that his moral organization but too often follows the law of the physical.