After a month of discomfort at Karáchi, rendered more uncomfortable by the compulsory joining of six unfortunate Staff-officers who lost their snug appointments in India,[7] we were moved to Gharra—"out of the frying-pan into the fire"—a melancholy hole some forty miles by road north of Head-quarters, and within hearing of the evening gun. I have already described its horror.[8] Our predecessors had not built the barracks or bungalows, and we found only a parallelogram of rock and sand, girt by a tall dense hedge of bright green milk-bush, and surrounded by a flat of stone and gravel, near a filthy village whose timorous inhabitants shunned us as walking pestilences.
This, with an occasional temperature of 125° F., was to be our "house" for some years. As I had no money wherewith to build, I was compelled to endure a hot season in a single-poled tent, pitched outside the milk-bush hedge; and after, to escape suffocation, I was obliged to cover my table with a wet cloth and pass the hot hours under it. However, energy was not wanting, and the regimental pandit proving a good school-master, I threw away Sindi for Maráthá; and in October, 1844, I was able to pass my examination in Maráthá at the Presidency, I coming first of half a dozen. About this time Southern Bombay was agitated by a small mutiny in Sáwantwádi, and the papers contained a long service-correspondence about Colonels Outram and Wallace, the capture of Amanghar, and Lieutenant Brassy's descent on Shiva Drug. I at once laid in a store of Persian books, and began seriously to work at that richest and most charming of Eastern languages.
On return to Karáchi, I found myself, by the favour of my friend Scott, gazetted as one of his four assistants in the Sind "Survey," with especial reference to the Canal Department; my being able to read and translate the valuable Italian works on hydro-dynamics being a point in my favour. A few days taught me the use of compass, theodolite, and spirit-level, and on December 10th, 1844, I was sent with a surveying party and six camels to work at Fulayli (Phuleli) and its continuation, the Guni river. The labour was not small; after a frosty night using instruments in the sole of a canal where the sun's rays seemed to pour as through a funnel, was decidedly trying to the constitution. However, I managed to pull through, and my surveying books were honoured with official approbation. During this winter I enjoyed some sport, especially hawking, and collected material for "Falconry in the Valley of the Indus."[9] I had begun the noble art as a boy at Blois, but the poor kestrel upon which I tried my "'prentice hand" had died soon, worn out like an Eastern ascetic by the severities of training, especially in the fasting line. Returning northwards, I found my Corps at Hyderabad, and passing through the deserted Gharra, joined the Head-quarters of the Survey at Karáchi in April.
Here I made acquaintance with Mirza Ali Akhbar, who owed his rank (Khan Bahádur) to his gallant conduct as Sir Charles Napier's munshi at Miani and Dubba, where he did his best to save as many unfortunate Beloch braves as possible. He lived outside the camp in a bungalow which he built for himself, and lodged a friend, Mirza Dáud, a first-rate Persian scholar. My life became much mixed up with these gentlemen, and my brother officers fell to calling me the "White Nigger." I had also invested in a Persian munshi, Mirza Mohammad Musayn, of Shiraz; poor fellow, after passing through the fires of Scinde unscathed, he returned to die of cholera in his native land. With his assistance I opened on the sly three shops at Karáchi,[10] where cloth, tobacco, and other small matters were sold exceedingly cheap to those who deserved them, and where I laid in a stock of native experience, especially regarding such matters as I have treated upon in my "Terminal Essay" to the "Thousand Nights and a Night,"[11] but I soon lost my munshi friends. Mirza Dáud died of indigestion and patent pills at Karáchi; I last saw Mirza Ali Akhbar at Bombay, in 1876, and he deceased shortly afterwards. He had been unjustly and cruelly treated. Despite the high praises of Outram and Napier for the honesty and efficiency of Ali Akhbar,[12] the new commission had brought against the doomed man a number of trumped-up charges, proving bribery and corruption, and managed to effect his dismissal from the service. The unfortunate Mirza, in the course of time, disproved them all, but the only answer to his application for being reinstated was that what had been done could not now be undone. I greatly regretted his loss. He had promised me to write out from his Persian notes a diary of his proceedings during the conquest of Scinde; he was more "behind the curtain" than any man I knew, and the truths he might have told would have been exceedingly valuable.
Karáchi was, for India, not a dull place in those days. Besides our daily work of planning and mapping the surveys of the cold season, and practising latitudes and longitudes till my right eye became comparatively short-sighted, we organized a "Survey Mess" in a bungalow belonging to the office "Compound." There were six of us—Blagrave, Maclagan, Vanrenin, and afterwards Price and Lambert—and local society pronounced us all mad, although I cannot see that we were more whimsical than our neighbours. I also built a bungalow, which got the title of the "Inquisition," and there I buried my favourite game-cock Bhujang (the dragon), who had won me many a victory—people declared that it was the grave of a small human. I saw much of Mirza Husayn, a brother of Agha Khan Mahallati, a scion of the Isma'iliyah, or "Old Man of the Mountain," who, having fled his country, Persia, after a rebellion, ridiculous even in that land of eternal ridiculous rebellions, turned condottière, and with his troop of one hundred and thirty ruffians took service with us and was placed to garrison Jarak (Jerruch). Here the Belochis came down upon him, and killed or wounded about a hundred of his troop, after which he passed on to Bombay and enlightened the Presidency about his having conquered Scinde. His brother, my acquaintance, also determined to attack Persia viâ Makran, and managed so well that he found himself travelling to Teheran, lashed to a gun carriage. The Lodge "Hope" kindly made me an "entered apprentice," but I had read Carlisle, "The Atheistical Publisher," and the whole affair appeared to me a gigantic humbug, dating from the days of the Crusades, and as Cardinal Newman expressed it, "meaning a goose club." But I think better of it now, as it still serves political purposes in the East, and gives us a point against our French rivals and enemies. As the "Scinde Association" was formed, I was made honorary secretary, and had no little correspondence with Mr. E. Blyth, the curator of the Zoological Department, Calcutta. Sir Charles Napier's friends also determined to start a newspaper, in order to answer the Enemy in the Gate, and reply to the "base and sordid Bombay faction," headed by the "Rampant Buist," with a strong backing of anonymous officials.
The Karrachee Advertiser presently appeared in the modest shape of a lithographed sheet on Government foolscap, and, through Sir William Napier, its most spicy articles had the honour of a reprint in London. Of these, the best were "the letters of Omega," by my late friend Rathborne, then Collector at Hyderabad, and they described the vices of the Sind Amirs in language the reverse of ambiguous. I did not keep copies, nor, unfortunately, did the clever and genial author.
This pleasant, careless life broke up in November, 1845, when I started with my friend Scott for a long tour to the north of Sind. We rode by the high-road through Gharra and Jarak to Kotri, the station of the Sind flotilla, and then crossed to Hyderabad, where I found my Corps flourishing. After a very jolly week, we resumed our way up the right bank of the Indus and on the extreme western frontier, where we found the Beloch herdsmen in their wildest state. About that time began to prevail the wildest reports about the lost tribes of Israel (who were never lost), and with the aid of Gesenius and Lynch I dressed up a very pretty grammar and vocabulary, which proved to sundry scientists that the lost was found at last. But my mentor would not allow the joke to appear in print. On Christmas Day we entered "Sehwán," absurdly styled "Alexander's Camp." Here again the spirit of mischief was too strong for me. I buried a broken and hocussed jar of "Athenæum sauce," red pottery with black Etruscan figures, right in the way of an ardent amateur antiquary; and the results were comical. At Larkháná we made acquaintance with "fighting FitzGerald," who commanded there, a magnificent figure, who could cut a donkey in two; and who, although a man of property, preferred the hardships of India to the pleasures of home. He had, however, a mania of blowing himself up in a little steamer mainly of his own construction, and after his last accident he was invalided home to England, and died within sight of her shores. At Larkháná the following letter was received:—
"Karáchi, January 3, 1846.
"My dear Scott,
"The General says you may allow as many of your assistants as you can spare to join their regiments, if going on service, with the understanding that they must resign their appointments and will not be reappointed, etc.
"(Signed) John Napier."
This, beyond bazar reports, was our first notice of the great Sikh War, which added the Punjab to Anglo-India. This news made me wild to go. A carpet-soldier was a horror to me, and I was miserable that anything should take place in India without my being in the thick of the fight. So, after a visit to Sahkar Shikarpúr and the neighbourhood, I applied myself with all my might to prepare for the Campaign. After sundry small surveyings and levellings about Sahkar (Sukhur), I persuaded Scott, greatly against the grain, to send in my resignation, and called upon General James Simpson, who was supposed to be in his dotage, and was qualifying for the Chief Command in the Crimea.
My application was refused. Happily for me, however, suddenly appeared an order from Bengal to the purport that all we assistant-surveyors must give sureties. This was enough for me. I wrote officially, saying that no man would be bail for me, and was told to be off to my corps; and on February 23rd, I marched with the 18th from Rohri.