(4) The migration of nations. Few things in the history of the world are more surprising to us than whole nations making their way to new and remote countries. I have thought I have got a little help towards understanding these movements when I have observed large bands of people—men, women, and children—pursuing their journey, carrying with them all they deemed necessary, and lying out at night on the bare ground, with a blanket, which they had carried over their shoulder, as their only covering. They took food with them when they knew that at their halting-place it could not be procured. Very differently do our native regiments travel. They are attended by a host of camp-followers, and have a formidable amount of baggage. I once saw a party of woodmen in the hills sleeping under a tree when there was frost on the ground; and on the remark being made it was a wonder they could live, a hillman remarked, "Has not each got his blanket? What hardship is there?" When nations migrated they no doubt sent out scouring parties, who seized all the food on which they could lay their hands. When travelling alone in the hills I had commonly with me a tent so small that a man carried it on his head, but I must acknowledge I could not approach the simplicity of the native traveller's arrangements.
CHAPTER XXX.
EUROPEANS IN INDIA.
The climate of India precludes the possibility of its being a sphere for European colonization. With the exception of the hill districts, the intense heat during the greater part of the year makes out-door occupation trying even to the native, and well-nigh unendurable for Europeans—a heat uncompensated by the coolness of the night, for in the North-West, at least, the stifling closeness of the night is more trying than the heat of the day. If this heat lasted for only a few days, as in Southern Australia, it might be borne, though a hindrance to work; but in India it lasts for months, and it is succeeded by months of drenching rain, during a great part of which the moisture and mugginess are as unpleasant as the previous dry heat had been.
Apart from climate, there is no room for us as colonists. In India we have not to do with rude tribes, as in America, New Zealand, and Australia, and in a measure in Southern Africa, that cannot be said to possess the land over which they and their fathers have long roamed, or of which they have cultivated a very small part. We have to do with ancient nations that have taken full possession of the land by cultivation of the soil, and by pursuit of the arts of civilized life. We find in India no tribes wasting away before the white stranger, but a people growing in number under the security of our government. There are districts in the North-West more densely peopled than any districts in Europe occupied by an agricultural population. The emigration of coolies to the Mauritius, to Bourbon, to the coast of South America, and to the West Indian Islands, has done little to relieve the pressure. Migration to unoccupied parts of Central India and Assam has been carried out to a small extent, and it is very desirable this migration should increase. Non-Aryan tribes occupy a large part of the mountains and forests of Central and Eastern India. They have no wish for accession from the people of the plains, and still less do they wish for the entrance of Europeans. I can say nothing about the mountains of the South, but so far as I have travelled over the sub-Himalayan range in the North there is no place for Europeans in it, except for officials or employers, and managers of native labour, such as tea-planters.
While India presents no sphere for European colonization, it presents an increasingly wide field for European agency in the civil and military services, in the departments of education, commerce, manufacture—for instance, of cotton goods, railways, indigo, and tea. In these different departments Europeans are in constant intercourse with natives of every class from the highest to the lowest. There is often much pleasant and courteous intercourse between them; but in language, habits, religion, in almost everything in which human beings can be separated from their fellows, they are so different that they remain to a great degree strangers to each other, however kindly may be their mutual feeling. English people never call India "home," though they may have lived in it the greater part of their life. This name is always reserved for our fatherland. (I had better say that the term English, as used in India, includes all from Great Britain and Ireland, and to them also the term European is mainly, though not exclusively, applied.) I have heard persons of pure English descent, who had never been out of India, speak of England as "home." The reservation of the word to the land from which we have gone, indicates the fact that in India we are strangers, and cannot cease to be strangers. Colonists in America and other lands may make a similar reservation; but living as they do among their own people, in a country which they expect to be the home of their descendants, the term as applied to England is deprived of much of its endearing force.
EUROPEAN AND NATIVE INTERCOURSE.
In the great Presidency cities, and in a less degree in other cities throughout the country, we have a large educated class of natives, who are well acquainted with our language and literature. They have pursued their studies in the hope of securing good situations, and this hope is in a large measure realized. They are found all over Northern India occupying responsible and well-paid positions. Many persons of this class come daily into close intercourse with Europeans in the discharge of their duties, and have means of knowing them which no other class possesses. The intercourse is generally courteous, in not a few cases friendly, and they talk freely with each other on a great variety of subjects. There is, however, not infrequently an underfeeling with educated natives that they are not sufficiently appreciated—that they do not get the place due to them—that they are treated as an inferior race; and there is consequently a suspiciousness fatal to cordiality. I am far from thinking that Europeans always treat educated natives with the courtesy due to them. I have known instances of marked discourtesy; but I am sure many of our people are bent on treating them with all justice and kindness, and sometimes, at least, this friendly feeling has not been reciprocated. Human nature being what it is, however much we may regret, we need not wonder at the grating between parties that have so much in common, and yet owing to that very circumstance have clashing feelings and interests.