"We now know, even at home, that India is not a country, but a continent. It contains as many races as the whole of Europe: here we have the Jangali, or wild men; the Dravidians, or old Turanian immigration; the pure Aryans from Persia, as the Nágar Brahman; the vast variety of mixed breeds between Dravidian and Aryan, such as the Telinga Brahman; and, besides these four great families, a number of intrusive peoples—Christians from Chaldea and Portugal; Jews, white and black; Rohillas ('hill-people') from the Afghan mountains; Sidis (Wásáwáhili) from Zanzibar; and Arabs, pure or mixed, the latter showing its type in the Mapillahs (Moplahs) of Malabar. After all, in Europe there are only three: the great Slav race, occupying the eastern half of the continent; the Scandinavo-Teuton; and the Græco-Latin races. Europe also speaks three great forms of language; here we have the three, Semitic, Hamitic, and Japhetic, or Turanian, with some thirty modifications of the Prakrit, which, in the hands of the literati, became, like the modern Greek spoken at Athens, the Sanskrit, or finished speech. It was the same with the Latina Rustica, not the language of Virgil and Cicero, but the quaint country tongues which branched off into the neo-Latin family.
"Again, the climate of India has a far wider range than that of Europe, even if we throw into the latter Iceland and Spitzbergen. The west regions of the mighty Himalayas, the 'Homes of Snow,' represent the Polar regions; and we run through the temperates into the tropical, or rather the equinoctial, about Ceylon. And what a richness and diversity of productions in the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral worlds, compared with the poor produce of the temperate regions! What untold wealth still hidden in the soil, and awaiting the skill and energy of the nineteenth century! What a grand field for exploration and discovery! Dr. de Marchesetti, a young Italian botanist from Trieste, assures us that the fungi, one of the most interesting families of plants, have hardly been studied at all. And how much remains for us to learn! For instance, no sword-cutter in Europe can tell you anything about the steel which makes the far-famed Khorásáni blades, miscalled 'Damascus;' and the dismantiferous regions between the valleys of the Ganges and the Krishna are in great part unexplored ground.
"On the other hand, the Kharekwasla Tank and the noble dam, built by Mr. Joyner, C.E., are well worth visiting, both on account of the intrinsic excellence of the work, and the great consequences to which such works must lead. It not only supplies the 'Monsoon Capital' of the Bombay Presidency, but it will diffuse life and plenty over some ninety linear miles of now waste ground. Travelling from Poonah to Hyderabad, you remark that the land at this season is mostly fit only for the traditional dragon and wild ass; it is, like Sind, a cross between an oven and a dust-bin. Yet where the smallest rill flows, all is life and verdure; the emerald-green topes, and the leek-green paddy fields, are a repose to the sight, a 'coolness to the eye,' as the Arabs say; and you hasten to plunge that hot and weary organ into the damp lush vegetation of orchard and field and kitchen-garden. The first step will be to supply water, as Mr. Joyner is doing; the second, to regulate its use. Here the golden fluid is wasted in a way which would scandalize the Arab, the Egyptian, the Sindi, and the 'Heathen Chinee.'
"And this leads us to notice another popular error which has gained possession of the British brain. Certain statistics, which may be correct, have taught it that India is an overcrowded land, and that its population per square mile, exceeding that of England, approaches that of Belgium. This, as with all statistics, is both true and untrue. Parts of Bengal, for instance, teem with human life; and as native wars are no more, and famines are to be turned, regardless of expense, into plenty, or rather profusion, the peasantry will end, in Kafir phrase, with 'eating one another up.' For note that the true cause of Indian famines is concealed from England. There is plenty of provision. There is an abundance of transport. But the people are so penniless that when grain rises one penny a pound, they must live on wild roots or starve.
"The statement that India is overcrowded is utterly misleading as regards the whole of India. Throughout the peninsula the lands are of three kinds, not including the jungles and forests, which cannot be touched without danger of diminishing the rain-supply. There are the fertile, as Gujerat; the wholly desert, mostly sandy and stony tracks; and the half-desert, which grows luxuriant crops only during the rains. And the latter are so extensive that with irrigation they would support at least treble the actual number of inhabitants.
"India, then, has more than one string to her bow: she will dispose of her increasing millions in three ways. Firstly, she will keep them at home and feed them by irrigation, which costs much, gives slow profits, but ends by being the best of investments. Secondly, she will export them to our other colonies, where labour is so much wanted, and where, as free hands, they will take the place of our old friend, the 'a'mighty nigger.' Sind, I need hardly tell you, calls aloud for them, and can offer the richest of soils. Thirdly, she will retrench her useless expenditure; abolish a host of local Governors who should be Secretaries; of Commanders-in-Chief who should be Major-Generals; and of Members of Council whose chief work is to spoil foolscap. Lastly, she will become a manufacturing country. She has coal and iron; she breeds millions of human beings, hireable at sixpence a day; her men can mine, and her women and children can work at la petite industrie. Despite the 'mildew' with which mildewed Manchester, pace Mr. E. Ashworth, is attempting to inoculate India; despite the timidity of statesmen, and despite the jealousy of the manufacturing mob, which wishes to buy dirt-cheap from India, and to make her pay 100 per cent. for working her own produce, we have a conviction, as we have before said, that Indian manufactures will succeed; and that Great Britain, with one foot on Hindustan and another in China, whose three hundred millions work at threepence a day, will command the wool and cotton markets of the world, and will become the greatest producing power that the globe ever bore.
"Lanauli is a place of some importance, being the locomotive station at the head of the Bhore Ghát, whilst the site upon the edge of the Sahyadri Range renders it tolerably healthy for the Europeans. Consequently, where a few huts formerly rose, the place now contains some two hundred pale faces. I saw with immense satisfaction fifty-three men of the New Railway Volunteer Corps, which numbers a total of one hundred and fourteen, being drilled by a red-coated sergeant, under the eye of Captain Buckley. This is truly a patriotic movement, and one which may prove far more important than we expect in these days, when the native powers have armies far exceeding our own in numbers. There is hardly an 'Indian officer' who does not expect another 'Sepoy Mutiny' within ten years, and yet we do little to prepare for it. Were I Viceroy, every station should have its cannon-armed and casemated place of refuge.