Mussoorie has all the advantages and none of the drawbacks of Simla, and lies compactly in ground on which a small city could be built, whereas Simla straggles along a narrow mountain ridge, and up and down the steep sides of an Alpine peak. It is questionable, however, whether, if India is to be governed from at home, the seat of government should not be at Poonah, within reach of London. The telegraph has already made viceroys of the ancient kind impossible.
The sunrise view of the Snowy Range from my bungalow was one rather strange, from the multitude of peaks in sight at once, than either beautiful or grand. The desolate ranges of foot-hills destroy the beauty that the contrast of the deodars, the crimson rhododendrons, and the snow would otherwise produce, and the height at which you stand seems to dwarf the distant ranges; but from one of the spots which I reached in a mountain march, the prospect was widely different. Here we saw at once the sources of the Jumna, the Sutlej, and the Ganges, the dazzling peaks of Gungootrie, of Jumnotrie, and of Kamet; while behind us in the distant plains we could trace the Sutlej itself, silvered by the hazy rays of the half-risen sun. We had in sight not only the 26,000 feet of Kamet, but no less than twenty other peaks of over 20,000 feet, snow-clad to their very bases, while between us and the nearest outlying range were valleys from which the ear caught the humble murmur of fresh-risen streams.
CHAPTER VIII.
COLONIZATION.
CONNECTED with the question of the site of the future capital is that of the possibility of the colonization by Englishmen of portions of the peninsula of India.
Hitherto the attempts at settlement which have been made have been mainly confined to six districts—Mysore, where there are only some dozen planters; the Neilgherries proper, where coffee-planting is largely carried on; Oude, where many Europeans have taken land as zemindars, and cultivate a portion of it, while they let out the remainder to natives on the Metayer plan; Bengal, where indigo-planting is gaining ground; the Himalayan valleys, and Assam. Settlement in the hot plains is limited by the fact that English children cannot there be reared, so to the hill districts the discussion must be confined.
One of the commonest of mistakes respecting India consists in the supposition that there is available land in large quantities on the slopes of the Himalayas. There are no Himalayan slopes; the country is all straight up and down, and for English colonists there is no room—no ground that will grow anything but deodars, and those only moderately well. The hot sun dries the ground, and the violent rains follow, and cut it through and through with deep channels, in this way gradually making all the hills both steep and ribbed. Mysore is still a native State, but, in spite of this, European settlement is increasing year by year, and there, as in the Neilgherries proper, there is room for many coffee-planters, though fever is not unknown; but when India is carefully surveyed, the only district that appears to be thoroughly suited to English settlement, as contrasted with mere planting or land-holding, is the valley of Cashmere, where the race would probably not suffer deterioration. With the exception of Cashmere, none of the deep mountain valleys are cool enough for permanent European settlement. Family life is impossible where there is no home; you can have no English comfort, no English virtues, in a climate which forces your people to live out of doors, or else in rocking-chairs or hammocks. Night-work and reading are all-but impossible in a climate where multitudes of insects haunt the air. In the Himalayan valleys, the hot weather is terribly scorching, and it lasts for half the year, and on the hill-sides there is but little fertile soil.
The civilians and rulers of India in general are extremely jealous of the “interlopers,” as European settlers are termed; and, although tea-cultivation was at first encouraged by the Bengal government, recent legislation, fair or unfair, has almost ruined the tea-planters of Assam. The native population of that district is averse to labor, and coolies from a distance have to be brought in; but the government of India, as the planters say, interferes with harsh and narrow regulations, and so enormously increases the cost of imported labor as to ruin the planters, who, even when they have got their laborers on the ground, cannot make them work, as there exists no means of compelling specific performance of a contract to work. The remedy known to the English law is an action for damages brought by the employer against the laborer, so with English obstinacy we declare that an action for damages shall be the remedy in Burmah or Assam. A provision for attachment of goods and imprisonment of person of laborers refusing to perform their portion of a contract to work was inscribed in the draft of the proposed Indian “Code of Civil Procedure,” but vetoed by the authorities at home.
The Spanish Jesuits themselves were not more afraid of free white settlers than is our Bengal government. An enterprising merchant of Calcutta lately obtained a grant of vast tracts of country in the Sunderbunds—the fever-haunted jungle near Calcutta—and had already completed his arrangements for importing Chinese laborers to cultivate his acquisitions, when the jealous civilians got wind of the affair, and forced government into a most undignified retreat from their agreement.
The secret of this opposition to settlement by Europeans lies partly in a horror of “low-caste Englishmen,” and a fear that they will somewhat debase Europeans in native eyes, but far more in the wish of the old civilians to keep India to themselves as a sort of “happy hunting-ground”—a wish which has prompted them to start the cry of “India for the Indians”—which of course means India for the Anglo-Indians.
Somewhat apart from the question of European colonization, but closely related to it, is that of the holding by Europeans of landed estates in India. It will perhaps be conceded that the European should, on the one hand, be allowed to come into the market and purchase land, or rent it from the government or from individuals, on the same conditions as those which would apply to natives, and, on the other hand, that special grants should not be made to Europeans as they were by us in Java in old times. In Eastern countries, however, government can hardly be wholly neutral, and, whatever the law, if European landholders be encouraged, they will come; if discouraged, they will stop away. From India they stop away, while such as do reach Hindostan are known in official circles by the significant name of “interlopers.”