the tree will only grow in the unhealthy low grounds. Cinchona-planting, on the other hand, promises well, but is still in the experimental stage, and many years must elapse before the full results of trials now in progress can be known. Forty years of careless cultivation have produced a crisis in the affairs of the colony, which is at present acute, and promises to be long-continued. The difficulty has, however, been faced, not by despondency, but by courageous efforts to introduce new industries, and British energy will probably prove too much for Hemileia vastatrix in the long run. CHAPTER XIV. MADRAS-CALCUTTA. December 25-January 4, 1881. CHRISTMAS DAY! and we lie on deck, torpid with the heat, while our relatives at home are sitting round the fire, cracking nuts and drinking claret, with the snow covering everything outside. The Poonah's passengers are on their way out; and as they have been together for four weeks, while we have newly joined the ship, we feel rather out in the cold, spite of the "festive season." But the season is not festive on board our steamer. Not one of these people, who have known each other for a month, has the courage to suggest some common festivity. There are lots of children, but no one proposes a Christmas game even for them. We have had no Christmas Church service, and the bough of mistletoe, which some frolicsome steward has hung from the awning, might be a life-belt for all the notice we take of it. Never have I spent so dull a Christmas Day. Never have I thought my countrymen so stiff and unsocial. We have now seen the last of settlement life in the East, and shall learn in India how England rules, rather than how she influences a native population. It is time, while the palms of Ceylon are fading on the horizon, to arrange our ideas of the remarkable series of commercial outposts which we have passed since leaving Japan. The Portuguese; then the Dutch; and lastly the English. It seems to have been the rule throughout the East. The first came with commerce in one hand and religion in the other, caring less for business than for the supremacy of the Church, and advocating her interests. with the sword. The second forgot religion for the sake of trade, but was fond of large profits, and exploited new countries in his own interests, without caring much for those of the natives. The Englishman is in the East, first and foremost to trade; next, to make native races accept Western ideas of civilization, at least as far as is needful for the conduct of business. He builds roads, introduces autonomy into the settlement towns, administers justice, enforces order, and erects churches, the last, apparently, for the sake of his beloved respectability," and not at all because he is anxious to proselytize. Rich societies, indeed, send him out missionaries, whom he distrusts, not because they are ministers of religion, but from the fear that they may embroil his nation with native power or prejudice, and thus put hindrances in the way of trade. His relations. with the flag are admirable. The power of England is always regarded as something to fall back upon in case of emergency, never as a governing agency. He himself provides for the maintenance of order and the administration of justice, while the minister, or consul, supports rather than overrules his authority. French settlements, on the other hand, are not autonomous, and expect to be governed rather than upheld by their officials; while the Germans always operate under foreign flags, and that so well, that they are everywhere our most dangerous commercial competitors. It seems probable, however, that a German Hongkong or Ceylon would have its energies seriously crippled by bureaucratism. Whether England has bought her commanding position in the East too dearly is a great question. We talk with pride of a national trade of two thousand millions sterling per annum ; but America does the same amount of business without having spent a dollar on conquest, and Germany turns over thirteen hundred millions a year for which she has paid practically nothing. If we regard the increase of trade in the last ten years, a period during which we have spent large sums on "little wars" waged on behalf of commerce, while America and Germany have laid out nothing for similar ends, we find that England has added three hundred millions to her returns, but Germany has increased hers by only thirty millions less, and America by two hundred millions more than ourselves. To count the cost of England's commercial position is impossible. We know that the bill is inconceivably big, but other nations, who do not care to pay as dearly as we do for trade, are doing well enough to make it doubtful whether the vast sums we have spent on commercial wars is money well invested. December 27.-European Madras lies spread along an extensive bund, backed by a level and uninviting country. The curved arms of two unfinished piers received the Poonah on our arrival, and these, in their present state, hardly break the violence of the great waves which, driven by the monsoon, fall in heavy surf upon the exposed shore. The beach is lined with large buildings-custom-house, godowns, and merchants' hongs, while, at some distance southward of the town, is Government House, half hidden in a mass of green foliage. The ship's anchor was hardly down before she was surrounded by surf-boats, big, flat-bottomed craft, made of planks, without ribs or framing, and sewn together with fibres. Ten Tamils, naked but for their waistcloths, form the crew of each boat, and an eleventh man steers. Their oars are long poles terminating in large wooden discs, and the rowlocks are wooden pins to which the oar is tied by a fibre rope. No sooner was a boat alongside than its headman clambered up the ship's side and began touting for passengers. "Master "Seven rupee, go ashore, come back." "Seven iniquities! We shan't go ashore at all unless you'll take us there and back for four rupees. "All right, master. Take ticket!" Therewith he shoved a bit of tin stamped with the number of his boat into want boat?" VOL. II. "How much?" |