Rambles on Railways

by Sir Cusack P. Roney

“The subject of bad treatment to native travellers is also forcibly brought to notice, for not only are native passengers of all classes and grades, without distinction, subjected to disrespect, but they have also to suffer the greatest insolence, impudence, hard language, contempt, and even sometimes ill-usage, from the menials of the railway police and other officials. Indiscriminate abuse, and often on their superiors in the social scale, is freely lavished, without let or stint or a regard to its quality. Passengers have even been struck and otherwise treated with great indignity, and second-class passengers are not allowed to get in even to the platform, but are made to herd with the mass outside. The most respectable Hindoos and Mohammedans further complain that they are liable to ill treatment and loss of honour from their European fellow-passengers in the second-class carriages; and thus native gentlemen of birth and respectability, in striving to avoid the crowd and pressure and company to be found in third-class carriages, find themselves even worse off in a second-class seat. Lastly, this memorial draws attention to the utter impossibility of native ladies of respectable birth and breeding taking advantage of the railway, as matters are at present carried on. The absence also of any proper retiring-room at the station for such of the better class of native ladies as have to wait for trains, places further obstacles in the way, and tends to keep them from the use of railways whenever they can be avoided.”

[88] For a very complete and interesting history of the East Indian Railway and of the existing arrangement for its management and control, the reader is referred to the letter and memorandum of Mr. R. W. Crawford, M.P., chairman of the board of directors, dated the 21st of March, 1867, and addressed to the Secretary of State for India.

[89] Whilst the area of British India is 956,436 square miles, with, in 1861, 143,271,210 inhabitants, the area of the “Native States,” is 596,790 miles, with 47,909,197 inhabitants, and the area of Portuguese India is 1,066 square miles, with 313,262 inhabitants, the area of the French settlement of Pondicherry is only 188 square miles, with a population of 203,887 souls.

[90] Bombay will have to go a-head in various ways, if she wish to manage with credit the immense traffic of which she is destined to be the centre almost immediately. First, as regards her docks and docking accommodation. At present there are two belonging to the Government. They were built by the old East India Company. One, though useful at the time it was built, and for many years afterwards, is no longer available for the steam vessels that now navigate the Indian seas. The second, the “Duncan” Dock, has only sixteen feet of water at the Lock Gates. This unfits it for many vessels, and will render it useless for most of the steamers that will shortly navigate to and from Bombay. The Peninsular and Oriental Company have two docks, one of which, although only 390 feet long, has 20 feet 6 inches at the lock, and will admit any vessel afloat except the “Great Eastern.” But the company requires both docks for its own purposes, and it will find it difficult to lend them, even occasionally, for docking the new transport steamers shortly to be put on between Suez and Bombay, until further docks are provided. It may be stated, en passant, that these steamers will, with the exception of the “Great Eastern,” be the largest vessels afloat—length of each, 381 feet; breadth, 49 feet; tonnage, 500 tons. When placed on the line between Suez and Bombay, all British troops destined for or from the East will be conveyed by them, instead of by vessels taking the passage by the Cape of Good Hope.

An illustration of the value of eligible docks constructed for the accommodation of important lines of ocean communication connected with arterial railways, is afforded by what has occurred at Southampton since 1840. They have proved themselves to be not only an advantageous investment, but to their presence are, no doubt, due the immense commercial development, and the equally great increase which has taken place in its population in the last twenty-five years. The docks were opened for business in 1840, and at the end of four years the revenue yielded by them was only £4,018; but in 1844 Southampton was made the port of arrival and departure of the Peninsular and the West India Mail steamers. The revenue of the docks had therefore risen to £20,614 in 1850. Five years afterwards, by which time the steamers of the several companies had increased in magnitude and in frequency of arrivals and departures, the dock revenue had risen to £55,442. In 1860 it was £54,558; in 1861, £55,342; in 1862, £58,121; 1863, £57,739; 1864, £58,358; 1865, £62,449; and in 1866, £66,011. In 1854 the inhabited houses within the postal limits of the town and neighbourhood, of which the Post Office is the Head-centre, were 14,290, and the population had risen from about 45,000 in 1844 to 78,829. In 1863, the population was 108,079, the inhabited houses 19,969. In 1867, the population and the inhabited houses within the same limits had increased still further. The estimated population of the actual borough, in the middle of 1867, was 56,107, and the inhabited houses, 9,263.

Bombay is also very defective as regards hotel accommodation. The defect, however, is, to a certain extent, about to be remedied. One is in course of erection on the Esplanade, and nearly ready for opening, which will be a valuable acquisition, as well as an ornament, to the city. Messrs. Ordish & Lefeuvre, of London, are the architects. The building (of four stories), will be 190 feet long, 90 wide, 85 high.

It is by works such as these, and others suited for great commercial purposes, that Bombay may eventually become successful in its aspirations to be the capital city of the Indian Empire. In population she already exceeds those of the two other great capitals of India. The population of Calcutta, is, according to the latest estimates, about 700,000; of Madras, according to the Administrative Report for 1863, 427,771; whilst that of Bombay was, according to the census of February, 1864, 816,562.

[91] “Sir Bartle Frere sees at a glance the immense importance, both politically and commercially, of the Punjaub lines in the whole economy of the railway system of India; he sees, too, no doubt, their bearing and intimate connection with that direct route to Europe through the Euphrates valley, which, by the untiring exertions of the very able Chairman of the Punjaub and Scinde Railways, must sooner or later be a fait accompli. Nor does he stand alone in the view he takes of this great question. The Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjaub is strong on the same side, and the whole press of India is unanimous in urging the completion of those lines with the utmost speed.

“At the recent Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, at Dundee, in August last, Sir Samuel Baker, President of the Geographical section, when speaking of our Indian possessions, said: ‘It appears to many of us as the affair of yesterday that the overland route to India was established by the indefatigable Waghorn (whose name should ever be held in honour); but in the short space of about fifteen years the camel has ceased to be “the ship of the desert” upon the Isthmus of Suez. A railroad connects the Red Sea with the Mediterranean; a canal already conveys the sweet waters of the Nile through deserts of arid sand to Suez, and a fleet of superb transports upon the Red Sea conveys our troops to India. Who can predict the future? Who can declare the great French work to be impossible, and deny that within the next half century the fleets of the Mediterranean will sail through the Isthmus of Suez upon the Lesseps Canal? England has been the first to direct to general use the power of steam. Our vessels were the first to cross the Atlantic and to round the stormy Cape to India. But have we not thus destroyed the spell that kept our shores inviolate. Not only ourselves, but the French, possess a magnificent fleet of transports on the Red Sea. We can no longer match the dexterity of our sailors against overwhelming odds. Steam breaks the charm. Wars are the affairs of weeks or days. There are no longer the slow marches that rendered inaccessible far distant points. The railway alters the former condition of all countries. Without yielding to exaggerated alarm, we must watch with intense attention the advances of Russia upon the Indian frontier, and, beyond all geographical enterprises, we should devote extreme interest to a new and direct route to India by the Euphrates Valley and Persian Gulf, thus to be independent of complications that might arise with Egypt.’

“So long as the Indian Empire exists, the connection between India and this country must be kept up; and if that connection were interrupted for many months, the doom of our Eastern Empire would be practically sealed. England maintains her position in India by force of arms; and it is a principle, both of war and of common sense, to take efficient means to keep open the lines of communication between the base and the field of operation.