I have the sole direction and control of nearly four hundred and fifty workmen, including paying them, keeping accounts, drawing plans, and everything. I have to get earth dug for bricks, see the moulds made and watch the progress of them till the kiln is full, get wood for the kiln, and direct the lighting of the same, and finally provide a goat to sacrifice to the demon who is supposed to turn the bricks red! Then I must get bamboos and grass cut for thatching, and string made for the purpose; send about the hills for sand for mortar, and limestone to burn, see it mixed and prepared, and then show the niggers how to use it. Then the whole of the wood-work must be set out and made under one's own eye, and a lump of iron brought from the mine to be wrought (also under one's direction) into nails and screws, before a single door can be set up; and when to all this is added the difficulty of getting hands (I mean in the hills), and the bother of watching the idlest and most cunning race on earth, you may suppose my "unpaid magistracy" is no sinecure. I am not exaggerating or indeed telling half the difficulty, for fear you should think the whole a romance. You will naturally ask how I learnt all these trades. I can only say that you can't be more astonished than I am myself, and can only satisfy you by the theory that "necessity is the mother of invention." I am seldom able to sit down from sunrise to sunset, when I get a hasty dinner, and am then only too glad to sleep off the effects of the day. How I have escaped fever during the last month I cannot think, as it has been terribly hot in the sun, even in the hills, and I have lived in the blaze of it pretty constantly. Colonel Lawrence seems determined I shall have nothing to stop me, for his invariable reply to every question is, "Act on your own judgment;" "Do what you think right;" "I give you carte blanche to act in my name, and draw on my funds," and so forth.
Are you aware of the nature of the institution? It was started, in idea, by Colonel Lawrence some two or three years ago, and a sufficient sum of money for a commencement having been raised, he charged me with the erection of the necessary buildings, and the organization and setting in motion of the great machine which is to regenerate and save from moral and physical degradation, sickness, and death, the children of the British soldiers serving in India. The object is to teach them all things useful, while you give them the advantage of a healthy climate, removed from the evil influence of a barrack-room. The children are to remain in the Asylum until their parents return to England, or till old enough to join the ranks, or be otherwise provided for.
Another drag upon my hands is the care of a small European boy, who was lately found up in Cabul, and is supposed to be the son of some soldier of the destroyed army. He has been brought up as a Mussulman, and made to believe his father was such, and is a very bigot. Colonel Lawrence sent him to me from Lahore, but forgot to write about him, so I know no more of him than I have seen in the newspapers, and have no idea what to do with him, or where he is to go. He is rather a nuisance, and I shall be glad when he goes, as there is little but his odd fate to interest one in him; and I have considerable doubts as to his genuine origin. He is more like a half-caste than an "European." Our communication is brief, as he speaks but little Hindostanee, and I less Persian. The Asylum is a much more interesting occupation, as, independently of its object, there is a pleasure in covering a fine mountain with buildings of one's own designing.
A few days later he writes:—
My last few days at the Asylum were enlivened by the arrival of Mrs. George Lawrence, whose tent was pitched close to mine, on the hill-top. She is a great acquisition in a forest life, and a very nice person,—the wife of the Captain Lawrence who was one of the Cabul prisoners. She is to be superintendress until the arrival of the future man from England. I have fourteen little girls to take care of, by the same token, and listen to the grumblings of their nurses. In short, I don't know myself, and that is the long and short of it. I am going to Simla for a day or two, to see Mr. Thomason.
And again, to his brother:—
The state of things is so provokingly quiet and placid, that there seems but small chance of our being called upon for another rush across country (called a "forced march"), like the one of December, 1845; and one is obliged to take to anything that offers, to avoid the "tædium vitæ" which the want of employment engenders in this "lovely country," in those, at least, who have not learnt to exist in the philosophical medium of brandy and cheroots. Did I tell you, by-the-bye, that I abjured tobacco when I left England, and that I have never been tempted, by even a night "al fresco," to resume the delusive habit? Nor have I told you (because I despaired of your believing it) that I have declined from the paths of virtue in respect to beer also, these two years past, seldom or never even tasting that once idolized stimulant!! It has not been caused alone by a love of eccentricity, but by the very sensitive state of my inner man, (achieved in India,) which obliges me to live by rule. This is all very edifying, no doubt, to you; to me it is especially so, for I believe if I get on well in India, it will be owing, physically speaking, to my digestion.
Subathoo, June 18th, 1847.
I am getting on famously at the Asylum just now, and have succeeded in getting the children under cover before the rains. I have narrowly escaped a bad fever through overwork in the sun, but, by taking it in time, I got right again. The weather has since taken a turn, and become much cooler, besides which my principal anxiety is over for the season. I have certainly had a benefit of work, both civil and literary, for the Institution, and since Colonel Lawrence put an advertisement in the papers, desiring all anxious persons to apply to me, I have had enough on my hands. It is all very well, but interferes with my reading no little; and I am sure to get more kicks than thanks for my pains from an ungrateful and undiscerning public. However, as long as Colonel Lawrence leaves everything so completely in my hands, and trusts so implicitly to my skill and honesty, it would be a shame not to work "un-like a nigger."