The new Superintendent set to work to reorganise the Penal Settlement with great vigour. But he found that the changes really amounted to introducing a new government. While, therefore, after six months he was able to report encouraging results, he desired that Lord Mayo should 'personally realise the magnitude and difficulty of the task.'
'Progress has been made,' the Superintendent wrote to the Viceroy's Private Secretary, 'but I am anxious that Lord Mayo should himself see what has been done, before we commence the clearing. No one can thoroughly understand this place until he has seen it.' 'I look to the Governor-General's visit,' he again wrote in the midst of his difficulties, 'to set all these matters straight.'
On the 24th January, 1872, the Earl of Mayo left Calcutta on his cold weather tour. His purpose was first to visit Burma, next to call at the Andamans on the return passage across the Bay of Bengal, and then to inspect the Province of Orissa. In each of these three places, weighty questions of internal policy demanded his presence. After completing his work in Burma, he cast anchor off Hopetown in the Andamans at 8 A.M. on the 8th February, 1872. A brilliant party of officials and guests accompanied the Viceroy and the Countess of Mayo in H. M.'s frigate Glasgow, and on the attendant steamship Dacca.
Lord Mayo landed immediately after breakfast, and during a long day conducted a thorough inspection of Viper and Ross Islands, where the worst characters were quartered. Ample provisions had been made for his protection. A detachment of free police, armed with muskets, moved with the Governor-General's party in front, flank, and rear. The prisoners were strictly kept at their ordinary work; and on Viper and Ross Islands, the only ones where any danger was apprehended, the whole troops were under arms. One or two convicts, who wished to present petitions, handed them to an officer in attendance, without approaching the Viceroy; and the general feeling among the prisoners was one of self-interested satisfaction, in the hope of indulgences and pardons in honour of the visit.
The official inspection was concluded about 5 o'clock. But Lord Mayo desired, if possible, to create a sanitarium, where the fever patients might shake off their clinging malady. He thought that Mount Harriet, a hill rising to 1116 feet a mile and a half inland from the Hopetown jetty, might be suitable for this purpose. No criminals of a dangerous sort were quartered at Hopetown; the only convicts there being approved ticket-of-leave men of good conduct. However, the Superintendent despatched a boat to convey the guards to the Hopetown jetty.
'We have still an hour of daylight,' said Lord Mayo, bent on the sanitarium project, 'let us do Mount Harriet.' On landing at the Hopetown jetty he found gay groups of his guests enjoying the cool of the day, and had a smile and a kind word for each as he passed. 'Do come up,' he said to one lady, 'you'll have such a sunset.' But it was a stiff climb through the heavy jungle and only one recruit joined him. His own party were dead tired; they had been on their feet for six blazing hours, and Lord Mayo, as usual the freshest after a hard day, begged some of them to rest till he returned. Of course no one liked to give in, and the cortège dived into the jungle. When they came to the foot of the hill, the Viceroy turned round to one of his aide-de-camps, who was visibly fatigued now that the strain of the day's anxiety had relaxed, and almost ordered him to sit down.
The Superintendent had sent on the one available pony, but Lord Mayo at first objected to riding while the rest were on foot. When half way up, he stopped and said: 'It's my turn to walk now; one of you get on.' At the top he carefully surveyed the capabilities of the hill as a sanitarium. He thought he saw his way to improve the health of the Settlement, and with the stern task of reorganisation to make a work of humanity go hand in hand. 'Plenty of room here,' he cried, looking round on the island group, 'to settle two millions of men.' Presently he sat down, and gazed silently across the sea to the sunset. Once or twice he said quietly, 'How beautiful.' Then he drank some water. After another long look to the westward, he exclaimed to his Private Secretary: 'It's the loveliest thing I think I ever saw:' and came away.
The descent was made in close order, for it was now dark. About three-quarters of the way down, torch-bearers from Hopetown met the Viceroy and his attendant group of officials and guards. Two of his party who had hurried forward to the pier saw the intermittent gleam of the torches threading their way through the jungle; then the whole body of lights issued by the bridle-path from the woods, a minute's walk from the jetty. The Glasgow frigate lay out on the left with her long line of lights low on the water; the Scotia and Dacca, also lit up, beyond her; another steamer, the Nemesis, was coaling nearer to Hopetown, on the right. The ships' bells had just rung seven. The launch with steam up was whizzing at the jetty stairs; a group of her seamen were chatting on the pier-end. It was now quite dark, and the black line of the jungle seemed to touch the water's edge.
The Viceroy's party passed some large loose stones to the left at the head of the pier, and advanced along the jetty; two torch-bearers in front, the light shining strongly on the tall form of Lord Mayo, in a grey tussa-silk coat, close between his Private Secretary and the Superintendent; the Flag-Lieutenant of the Glasgow and a Colonel of Engineers a few paces behind, on left and right; the armed police between them, but a little nearer the Viceroy. The Superintendent turned aside, with Lord Mayo's leave, to give an order about the morning's programme, and the Viceroy stepped quickly forward before the rest to descend the stairs to the launch. The next moment the people in the rear heard a noise as of 'the rush of some animal' from behind the loose stones: one or two saw a hand and a knife suddenly descend in the torch-light. The Private Secretary heard a thud, and instantly turning round, found a man 'fastened like a tiger'1 on the back of the Viceroy.
1 I use his own words.