Having set to work under new and favourable conditions, he pursued his task with what in many men would be termed ardour and enthusiasm. These qualities were evinced by him, no doubt, but in his nature they were over-borne by persistency and determination. Thus it would be more correct to say that he urged on the chariot of state with disciplined energy. He well knew, as the Board before him had known, that the results of large operations must in the long run be well reported for public information. But he held that the reporting might be deferred for a short season. Meanwhile he would secure actual success; the work should from beginning to end be accurately tested; it should be tempered and polished like steel and finished usque ad unguem. Some officers would ensure an excellent quality of work with great pains, but then they would fall short in quantity; others would despatch a vast quantity, but then it would be of inferior quality; he would have both quality and quantity, all the work that came to hand must be performed in time, but then it must also be done well. Nothing is more common even for able administrators than to lean too much towards one or the other of these two alternatives; no man ever held the balance between the two better than he, and very few could hold it as well. In no respect was his pre-eminence as an administrator more marked than in this. In the first instance he would prepare no elaborate despatches, indite no minutes, order no detailed reports to be prepared, write no long letters. He would have action absolutely, and work rendered complete. His management of men may be aptly described by the following lines from Coleridge’s translation of Schiller:
“Well for the whole, if there be found a man
Who makes himself what nature destined him,
The pause, the central point, to thousand thousands—
Stands fixed and stately like a firm-built column.
. . . . . . . . . .
“How he incites and strengthens all around him,
Infusing life and vigour. Every power
Seems as it were redoubled by his presence;
He draws forth every latent energy,
Showing to each his own peculiar talent.”
He knew that an administrator shines, not only in what he does himself, but also in what he induces others to do, that his policy will in part be tested by the character of the men whom he raises up around him, that the master is recognised in his pupils, and that if his work is to live after him, he must have those ready who will hand on the tradition, and will even take his place should he fall in the battle of life. His aim, then, was to establish a system and found a school.
During 1853 and the early part of 1854 he remained in fair health, though not in full strength according to his normal standard. During the early summer of 1854 he sojourned at Murri, a Himalayan sanatorium in the region between the Jhelum and the Indus. At this sanatorium, six to eight thousand feet above sea-level, he enjoyed the advantages which have been already described in reference to Simla. His horizon was bounded by the snowy ranges that overlook the valley of Cashmere. About midsummer he returned to his headquarters at Lahore in the hottest time of the year, and he was once more stricken down with illness, from the effects of which he certainly did not recover during the remainder of his career in the Punjab. Fever there was with acute nervous distress, but it was in the head that the symptoms were agonizing. He said with gasps that he felt as if rakshas (Hindoo mythological giants) were driving prongs through his brain. The physicians afforded relief by casting cold douches of water on his head; but when the anguish was over his nerve-system seemed momentarily injured. Afterwards when alluding to attacks of illness, he would say that he had once or twice been on the point of death. Perhaps this may have been one of the occasions in his mind. For a man of his strength the attack hardly involved mortal danger; still it was very grave and caused ill effects to ensue. After a few days he rallied rapidly, went back to Murri, and resumed his work, disposing of the arrears which in the interval had accumulated. Doubtless he returned to duty too soon for his proper recovery, but this was unavoidable.
After 1854 he spent the summer months of each year at Murri, having been urged to do so by the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie.
At various times he visited several of the Native States under his charge, exchanging courtesies, conforming to their ceremonial usages, holding Oriental levees, and mixing in scenes of Asiatic pomp amidst localities of exceeding picturesqueness. He strove to set the seal on their contentment—hardly anticipating how soon he would have to require them to draw their swords for the Empire. He again visited Peshawur, directed operations against some offending hill-tribes, and marched along the whole Trans-Indus frontier.
In 1854 he caused a report of his civil administration to be prepared. This report recounted the efforts made for imparting force and vigour to the police, simplicity and cheapness to civil justice, popularity to municipal institutions, salubrity and discipline to the prisons, security to the landed tenures, moderation as well as fixity to the land-tax. It narrated the beginning of a national education, and the establishment of institutions such as dispensaries and hospitals, evincing a practical interest in the well-being of the people. It adverted specially to the construction of roads and bridges in the face of physical difficulties, the excavation of canals, the patrolling of the highways and the erection of caravan-serais. None could then foresee the enormous service which these highways would render to the British cause during the troubles which were in store for the country.
In corroboration of this summary, the following testimony was afterwards afforded in 1859 in a farewell address presented to him by his officers, when he was about to lay down his power, and to quit them perhaps for ever. Most of them were either eye-witnesses, or otherwise personally cognisant, of what they relate.
“Those among us who have served in political and diplomatic capacities know how you have preserved friendly relations, during critical and uncertain times, with the native principalities by which this province is surrounded; how, all along an extended, rugged, and difficult frontier, you have successfully maintained an attitude of consistency and resolution with wild and martial tribes, neither interfering unduly, on the one hand, nor yielding anything important on the other.