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INDIA AND INDIAN ENGINEERING.

THREE LECTURES

DELIVERED

AT THE ROYAL ENGINEER INSTITUTE, CHATHAM,

In JULY, 1872.

JULIUS GEORGE MEDLEY,

LIEUT.-COLONEL, ROYAL ENGINEERS; ASSOC. INST. C.E.; FELLOW OF THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY; PRINCIPAL, THOMASON CIVIL ENGINEERING COLLEGE, ROORKEE.

LONDON: E. & F. N. SPON, 48, CHARING CROSS.

NEW YORK: 446, BROOME STREET.

LONDON: PRINTED BY W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

SYLLABUS OF LECTURES.

INDIA--its area--physical features--climate--scenery. THE PEOPLE--Bengalees--languages--Hindooism--caste--conservatism of the East--the Mahomedans--Sikhs--Parsees. THE ENGLISH IN INDIA--their difficulties--the Anglo-Indian career--the mutiny--Christianity in India--arts and manufactures--general character of the people. ANGLO-INDIAN LIFE--in the station--in tents--cost of living--society in India--travelling--a tour in India.

The Indian Government--the Public Works Department. ROORKEE--the Thomason College--the Sappers and Miners--the workshops--career of a Royal Engineer--military engineering--miscellaneous duties of the Indian engineer--financial aspects of the Public Works Department--overseers--native subordinates--workmen.

BUILDING MATERIALS--stone--bricks--tiles--limes--timber--iron--wages and rates--weights and measures--absence of plant--water-raising machines--carts. FOUNDATIONS--well-cylinders--Indian rivers.

BARRACKS--difficulties of ventilating and cooling--private houses--churches--other buildings. BRIDGES--temporary--permanent--waterway. ROADS--metalling--hill roads. RAILWAYS--various lines--the permanent way--traffic arrangements. IRRIGATION WORKS--their importance--the Ganges Canal--crops and soils--design of canals--the head--velocity of stream--falls and rapids--drainage works--irrigation details--Madras weirs--tanks. RIVER WORKS--inundations--spurs.

INDIAN SURVEY DEPARTMENT--the Great Trigonometrical survey--Topographical survey--Revenue survey.

INDIA AND INDIAN ENGINEERING.

In proposing to deliver the short series of Lectures which I commence this evening, I had two objects in view; First, to interest you in the work which your brother officers are doing at the other end of the world, and which I think is little understood or appreciated in this country; Secondly, to give to those amongst you who are likely to proceed to India some useful information about the country itself, the nature of the work you will be called upon to undertake, and the special subjects of study to which it is desirable on that account to direct your attention.

In the present lecture, I shall endeavour to give you some idea of the physical features of India, its climate, its people, and of the peculiarities of Anglo-Indian life. In the other lectures, I shall say something of the Government, and the great Department of State by which public works are executed, and of the special duties and probable career of the Royal Engineer officers who are there employed; and shall then pass on to the materials and modes of construction with which the engineer is called upon to deal, and those specialities which distinguish his work from English practice.

India, then, is about as large as Europe without Russia. A line drawn from Cape Comorin at the south to Peshawur in the north will measure about 2000 miles; another line drawn from Kurrachee on the west coast to Calcutta will measure some 1500 miles; the total area of the whole peninsula, including British Burmah, is about 1,500,000 square miles, of which 900,000 are directly under British rule, while the remainder, though nominally under native governments, is more or less subject to us.

This vast area of country comprises almost every variety of physical configuration--lofty mountains and low hills; well-cultivated, alluvial plains, arid deserts, great forests, marshy swamps and dense jungles; long, broad rivers, numerous hill torrents, wide and deep nullahs. The varieties of climate to be found in this great continent are also numerous; for while the plains of Upper India are for several months parched up with a fiery heat, the summits of the Himalayahs are covered with perpetual snow; and while the rainfall of Sindh seldom exceeds four or five inches annually, there is a place in Assam called Cherra Poonjee, well known to geographers as the rainiest place on the earth's surface, the annual fall amounting to 650 inches.

The popular idea of India is that it is an extremely hot country, and speaking generally, the popular idea is correct. But the nights in Northern India are often excessively cold, and I have many times seen ice half an inch thick on the roadside puddles in the Punjab, while the hill stations at Simla, Mussorie, and elsewhere, 7000 feet above the sea level, are covered with snow in January and February.

In Upper India, the part with which I am best acquainted, we enjoy a climate which for four months in the year--November, December, January, and February--is probably unequalled in the world both for health and pleasure: bright skies, a sun hot indeed, yet not too hot for exercise all day long, and nights cold, dry, and bracing, with a clear, still atmosphere, make an almost perfect climate. In October, March, and April, the mornings, evenings, and nights are still delightful, though the heat out of doors in the daytime is great. For the remaining five months, the climate, to a European at least, is simply detestable. You have either fierce hot winds like the blast from a glass furnace, with clouds of dust; or else a moist, stagnant atmosphere like that of a continuous vapour bath, and excessively depressing. The nights are rather worse than the days, and life is only bearable inside large and lofty rooms and under swinging punkahs. In Southern India, there is less extreme heat, but more moisture, and no real cold weather.

Yet the climate, with proper precautions and temperate habits, is by no means unfavourable to the European constitution, except in peculiar cases. As a rule, men now return from India looking much the same as their English contemporaries, and those whose minds are well employed and whose bodies get a fair share of exercise, are as healthy as their fellow-countrymen whose lot is cast in England or the Colonies. Out of eight Engineer officers who left Chatham with me twenty-three years ago to go to India, six are now alive, and five out of the six are strong, healthy men. Nor is this at all an exceptional case; indeed, when an Anglo-Indian reaches a certain age he seems to live for ever, though the popular idea that this is because the Indian sun has dried him up into a mummy, is not founded on fact.

If I were asked whether India was a very beautiful country, I should reply that in general it is not, but that it has some of the finest scenery in the world. In travelling up the main line of railway, for instance, from Calcutta to Peshawur, your road lies for 1000 miles of that distance over a country that is one dead level, without even a hillock to break the monotony. If your journey is made in March, as far as the eye can reach it rests on an enormous sea of wheat, diversified by groves of mangoe trees, and mud villages, or brick-built towns. No crystal streams,--no clear lakes,--no undulating downs,--no parks or country houses,--not even a grass field. Yet the rich cultivation, and the general signs of prosperity amongst the dense population are at least pleasing to the philanthropist; and if we leave the railway at Umballa and travel for forty miles eastward, we find ourselves amongst the dark pine forests, the mountain torrents, and the craggy heights of the Himalayahs, while their gigantic tops covered with eternal snow, 10,000 feet higher than "the monarch of mountains," look down upon us in their calm and solemn grandeur.

Nor are the great forests and mountain ranges of Central India without much beauty; while the magnificent harbour of Bombay and other sea views on the coast show that India is not wanting in many of the charms of marine landscape.

But it is time that I should speak of the people of the country. Those who have never been in India often form their ideas, , from the few natives of India they have met in this country; but these are a small and very peculiar class, and are by no means fair specimens, not merely of the whole population, but even of their own province.

Let me, however, at once give you a few figures, which will show how unsafe it is to generalize from a few instances. India is inhabited by about 200 millions of people, speaking at least eleven totally distinct languages, and innumerable dialects, and differing amongst each other in features, character, and social customs, quite as much as the Russian or Spaniard does from the Englishman.

As, therefore, I have told you not to form a judgment of the whole from a few isolated and exceptional instances, I shall avoid falling into the same error, and only talk about the races with which I am personally acquainted.

As we go north, after leaving Bengal, we find ourselves amongst a more manly race--the stalwart Jat, the manly Rajpoot, the warlike Sikh, and the fierce and treacherous Puthan. These are the men with whom we wrestled for the empire of the East, and who now recruit our best native regiments,--who helped to plant the British flag on the towers of Pekin and the heights of Magdala.

Nor are these men at all deficient in intellectual power, though they have been less quick than the Bengalee to appreciate the advantages of education. But the Northern colleges and schools are now crowded with students, and even the frontier chieftains, who once thought it disgraceful that a son of theirs should wield a pen instead of a sword, have given in their adherence to the new-fangled ways of their conquerors.

It is absolutely necessary for every Anglo-Indian to acquire a certain colloquial proficiency in it; for English-speaking natives are rare, and when found in the ranks of domestic servants, do not bear the best of characters.

The people of Upper India generally are a good-looking race, with well-formed features and good figures. The complexion varies very much, but is generally brown or dark olive--very rarely black. Many of the men are strikingly handsome, but the best-looking women are generally secluded at home, and it is only occasionally that one sees a real Eastern beauty. I need hardly tell so intelligent an audience that both the Indian and English races belong to the same great Aryan stock, and that the people of whom I am speaking have nothing in common with the low-developed, barbarous races of Southern or Central Africa, or Australasia. On the contrary, they have a language, a religion, a code of laws, and a civilization, considerably older than our own, and which, though now degraded from their original purity, yet exist in full force amongst the great bulk of the people, and by their wonderful conservatism and adaptation to the requirements of Eastern life, bid fair to maintain their ascendancy for many generations to come, and to set European innovations at defiance.

As you know, of course, the vast majority of the people of India are Hindoos by religion. Boodhism, once prevalent in India as it is now in China, has disappeared, and Brahminism prevails. I have no time to enter into any learned dissertation on the Hindoo tenets, but I must allude to one of its most distinguishing features--that of Caste--because it has more practical bearing on the every-day life of the people than all the rest of the tenets put together, and because it is also generally misunderstood.

To lose caste, or be put out of caste, is as great a misfortune as ever, but there are very few offences for which a man cannot get back his caste by the payment of a few rupees, which are expended in eating and drinking by his fellow caste-men. The offences which involve loss of caste are offences against custom rather than religion, and indeed there are no people so grossly ignorant of technical religion and their sacred books as the Hindoos. The ordinary Brahmins are no better than the common people, and caste is a thing of custom and not of religious doctrine.

But if it be thought that, on that account, its hold on the people is small, the thinker has very little acquaintance with the power of custom in the East. The most bigoted Tory in England--if such a phenomenon now exists--is a Red Republican in presence of the Conservatism of the East. There you may see the land cultivated and the fields watered now as they were 2000 years ago, when the Macedonian phalanx defeated Porus on the banks of the Jhelum; there you may see "two women grinding at the mill" the corn for the daily meal, and can understand the force of the prophecy that one shall be taken and the other left. The ploughs and carts in every-day use are the same as those shown on the sculptures of Egypt or Assyria. The unleavened cakes that Sara prepared on the hearth for the angels were exactly similar to those your Indian servants now give you if you want a hasty meal. You see hundreds of men every morning sleeping outside their houses, and "taking up their beds and walking," by the simple process of rolling up their light cotton mattress under one arm, or carrying it and their light bamboo bedstead on their heads together. The women draw water from the well, and poise the same shaped vessels on their heads that Rebekah did when Abraham's servant greeted her, and, but a few steps off you will see the camels kneeling down, and the men unloading their burdens.

It is this wonderful conservatism that perhaps strikes the observant traveller more than anything else in the East; which opens his eyes to a state of society utterly foreign to all his Western experience, and makes him pause to think whether he is right after all in his ideas of the advantages of civilization. Is the man of the West any happier for his railways, electric telegraphs, steam factories, and Parliamentary Governments? Here he finds people who are not in the least anxious to govern themselves; who think fifteen or twenty miles a rather long day's journey, and very seldom take that; who are content to follow their fathers' calling as a matter of course, and who shrink with horror from that restless, bustling, feverish, active life which has become a second nature to the Englishman. The fact is, that each follows out, so to speak, the law of his being, and neither has a right to dictate to the other as to how he shall find his happiness.

Before leaving the subject of the Hindoo religion, I should perhaps mention that the hideous customs of Suttee , and the suicide of pilgrims under the car of Juggernath, are now things of the past, and indeed they were never sanctioned by the Hindoo sacred books. The crime of female infanticide amongst certain high-caste tribes still remains, but it too has nothing to do with the Hindoo religion; it arises from the social custom that a man of high rank is disgraced if his daughter is unmarried, while the same tyrant custom has imposed on him the necessity of spending large sums at his daughters' weddings. India is not the only country, nor are the Hindoos the only people, whom the tyranny of custom compels to extravagance and disregard of the obligations of common sense and right feeling, and even religious or moral duties.

Eight hundred and fifty years ago the Mahomedan armies overran India, and, after a series of fierce struggles, founded the empire of the Great Mogul at Delhi. Cities were sacked, their people massacred, temples and idols overthrown, and thousands of Hindoos were forcibly converted to Mahomedanism. But the fierce torrent soon spent its fury against the stolid wall of Hindooism. Few converts were made after the first few years, the new religion was even modified by the old, and at the present day the Mahomedans of India are scarcely one-tenth of the whole population, though doubtless a very important section of it. Generally speaking, they are a more manly race, as if they still possessed something of their former prestige. But Indian Mahomedanism is but a poor affair after all; it has taken from Hindooism the idea of caste, and the Turk, or even the Persian, would scarcely acknowledge his fellow-worshipper of India.

I must spare a moment to mention the Sikhs, a name well known in England five-and-twenty years ago, in connection with the fierce battles on the Sutlej, and afterwards at Chillianwala and Goojerat. At first only an insignificant sect, they were raised by persecution to importance as a faction, their founder being one of those earnest men who appear from time to time in every age, and, disgusted with the corruptions of religion, strive to erect a creed of Theism and morality in its stead. Now that their empire has been destroyed, their numbers are dwindling daily.

The Parsees of India are almost strangers and foreigners in the land like ourselves, descendants of the old Magi or Fire-worshippers of Persia, who, being driven out of their own country by persecution, have settled in India, where they form a small but very intelligent and respectable section of the community, possessing in a large degree those two rare qualities for an Eastern,--enterprise and public spirit. Several of them are, I believe, settled in London, and may be recognized by the peculiar high glazed hat which they always wear.

And in the midst of the 200 millions of dark-skinned people of the land dwell some 130 thousand British white faces, among them, but not of them, and indeed separated from them, not so much by the barriers of language, religion, and social customs, as by the far greater barrier of race, which, let philanthropists say what they will, has been created not without wise and useful purposes. The English in India are often judged harshly and unjustly on this head by their countrymen at home. We are told that we should mix more with the natives, and admit them on a footing of equality with ourselves. But how can you mix socially with men who will neither eat nor drink with you, and who would sooner see their wives and daughters dead than walking about with uncovered faces amongst strange men? The only real intimacy there can be between two races separated so far apart must be confined to those official or business relations in which there is a feeling of common interest; all beyond that must be forced and unnatural. If there is that equality between the races which some pretend, how is it we are there as rulers? I think, for my own part, that nothing is so apt to retard the advance of the weaker race, or to lessen the points of contact between the two, as the attempt to produce a forced and unnatural union, or to preach up an equality which every white man who has lived amongst the dark races knows in his heart does not exist.

I have often been asked whether the natives of India like us, and are attached to our rule, and it is rather a difficult question to answer. There cannot be much love or strong liking between people separated so completely in thought and feeling and almost every idea as we are, but there is often a very strong attachment to the individual Englishman placed in authority over, and living much amongst, them, such as an officer commanding a regiment, or a magistrate in charge of a district, an attachment which has often been severely tried , and which has often stood the trial successfully. As to liking for our Government, in the first place the great mass of the people in all probability never give the subject a thought; the present generation have no means of forming a comparison between British and native rule, and look upon the protection they enjoy for life and property as a matter of course. The better educated amongst them are more apt to resent their exclusion from the highest posts, than to be grateful for not having their throats cut and their houses plundered, as they might have been a hundred years ago.

The great drawback of our rule is, undoubtedly, that it is one of race over race. The Englishman, bred a free man, is forced into the position of a despot, and, in his endeavours to elevate his Indian subjects to the dignity of free men and the privileges of British citizens, he is rather apt to overdo the matter, and to forget the inherent differences of race; or, to put it in another form, to overlook the fact that our free ideas are the growth of several hundred years, just as their ideas are the growth of as many centuries of an entirely different history. Hence we are apt to see in India many ludicrous travesties of our public meetings, municipal institutions, and the like, at which the native attends to please his English superior, and does pretty well what he is told to do. When the native does attain to a high post, as a rule he is hated by his countrymen, who never thoroughly trust him, and would far sooner see an Englishman in his place.

Our attempts then at improvement are up-hill work, and made under all the disadvantages of the stiff and awkward part of our national character, which keeps us isolated even on the European continent. But we do our duty in India, I may fairly say, honestly and thoroughly, and if we have not gained the love, we have, at least, won the respect and confidence of our native subjects. If the motives of the Government are occasionally suspected or misrepresented, the individual Englishman at any rate is implicitly trusted. That is the real strength of our position, and if our Indian empire is ever destroyed by force, it will be through the decay in character of the individual Englishman.

It is the fashion in these days to sneer at what is called the selfish and exclusive policy of the old East India Company, and certainly no one could venture to propose now-a-days that the Indian Government should be vested with the power of granting or refusing a licence to any European who wished to visit India. Yet it is impossible not to respect the motive which caused the Company to ask for such a power in days gone by; their feeling that the stability of our rule depended, not upon brute force, but on prestige, on the belief the natives had of the superiority of our national character; and that every individual who, by loose or dishonest conduct, lowered that prestige in the eyes of the natives, was a dangerous enemy to the State, and ought to be removed. And when one sees, as unfortunately we often do see now-a-days in India, a disreputable and ragged fellow-countryman begging from house to house, or staggering about drunk in the native bazar, while the natives look upon him with mingled fear, contempt, and dislike, it is impossible not to wish that the power of deporting such wretched loafers from a country where they do incalculable harm, cannot be freely exercised.

And, looking on the reverse of the medal, we may say that what constitutes the great charm of an Anglo-Indian career is the feeling of individual responsibility and importance. The English are so few in number that everyone, whether civilian, soldier, merchant, or what not, as a rule enjoys a far higher position, and has more responsibility on his shoulders than he would have in a corresponding position at home. This applies more especially to the Government officials, charged with the administration of the country, and for that reason, scarcely any career offers such attractions as the Indian Civil Service. A young Englishman, very little past thirty, who, had he remained in England, might have thought himself lucky to be receiving his first brief, or might have been canvassing for the medical charge of a parish dispensary, finds himself governor of a district as large as three English counties, with a population of 300,000 souls, to whom he is the embodiment of the Government, and who look up to him for advice or direction on all possible and impossible subjects. He has extensive civil and criminal jurisdiction in his own court; he looks generally after all the schools in the district, superintends all the roads, bridges, buildings, jails, and municipal works; reports regularly to Government on the agriculture, trade, manufactures, statistics of every kind, and has usually some hobby of his own in addition; either starting agricultural shows, or improving the breed of horses, or lighting the towns with kerozine, or trying some new piece of machinery in the jail, which is the model manufactory of the district. His life may be lonely, for there are often not a dozen of his countrymen in the district. After his day's work is done, there is neither theatre, opera, nor concert to go to, nothing, indeed, in the shape of public amusement; but he is, in truth, too tired to care for it, and the interest and responsibility of his work compensate him for all.

He climbs gradually to a still higher position; perhaps becomes lieutenant-governor of a province as large as Germany, with 40 millions of inhabitants; retires at last from the service to spend the rest of his life in his native land, and finds his name and his services utterly unknown, not merely to the English public, but often to the very Government of which he had thought himself all this time the trusted servant.

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