Tropical sketches; or, reminiscences of an Indian Journalist

Preface

. The increased facilities of intercourse with Europe are rapidly producing innovations in India, and in Anglo-Indian life. Railways and the electric telegraph, a Civil Service no longer to be appointed on account of its family connections, and a public opinion in England bearing upon Indian Government, must, sooner or later, produce a complete revolution in the ordinary routine of Indian existence. These Tropical Sketches, therefore, will be, in a very few years, — nay, to a great extent, are now probably, — rather views of what has been than of what is • particularly in all that relates to newspapers and their offices. Many of the following chapters were ori ginally written in India, amid the scenes and VI

PREFACE.

. circumstances which they describe. They have all been carefully revised, however, and, in fact, rewritten for the present work. No man can have been the editor of a newspaper anywhere, without making many personal enemies. This is particularly the case in small communities, such as those of Colonial towns and the capitals of the Indian Presidencies. To such enemies a work issuing from the pen of the obnoxious editor will afford the long-sought opportunity of paying off old scores, of discharging the vials of that wrath which has long been pent up within the breast, uncomfortably and inconveniently. I am perfectly aware, also, that whoever ventures to find fault with any portion of the system of Indian administration, will find many ready to assail him. Some, writing from honest conviction in honest defence of the government they admire or serve ; others, to obtain the favour of the authorities, and thereby secure their own promotion or advan tage.

To the former I would simply observe, that, in the following pages, I confine my con demnation of Indian administration to that department in which I served — the Educational.

PREFACE.

. VII If I have written strongly on the subject, it is because I feel strongly. Mental philosophy and pure mathematics have been the subjects chiefly taught in the Government Colleges of India. The religion in which the students have been nurtured in infancy, Brahmanism, has been uprooted by the study of geography and astronomy, and no other religion has Go vernment given them the opportunity of in quiring into or embracing. It was but a few months ago that the leading and oldest daily journal in Calcutta — the Benyal Hurkaru — wrote as follows : — " It is a lamentable fact, that in no civilized country on earth has so little been done in the way of public instruction as in India, and even that little is more owing to private enter prise than to any endeavours on the part of Government to place education within the reach of the poor ; moreover, the little that has been done — little, considering the hundred millions of the British subjects — has chiefly been done by Missionaries, almost entirely unaided by government." The results of the system pursued in the Government Colleges have been such as might

PREFACE.

. have been anticipated from the studies most patronised — great intellectual acuteness and a total want of moral principle, utter infidelity in religion, combined with an enthusiastic worship of reason and money. Indeed, the members of the reformed Council of Education of Bengal seem to have partially discovered its defects. " Whilst we have trained scholars — " say they in a recent report ; "whilst we have trained scholars in scores, who will inte grate a difficult problem, no one has ever left our schools whom an officer making a road would employ as an overseer in preference to an English serjeant who can just read and write." Let the leading magazines and reviews in England which have said so much in favour of Government Education in India, particularly Blackwood and the Dublin University, ponder that confession — that and the following, both taken from the same report : — " The want of everything of a practical character in the educational course at present, appears to the Council to be its greatest defect. Everything that strikes the senses, one half of the whole circle of knowledge is, as it were, ignored in our present system of education." All honour

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. IX to the Council of Education of Bengal for ac knowledging its former deficiencies and short comings so candidly ! Let it not be for gotten, too, that the system must have been a very bad one indeed, which could call down such a censure from the present Council upon the labours of its predecessors. My readers must not suppose, however, that the chief objection has therefore been removed. Far from it. The youth of India are still brought up with out faith, without a religion, as in times past. I am perfectly aware that all this will not prevent my being virulently attacked by certain Indian journals and Anglo-Indian patriots — " Venomous falsehoods," " Ignorant and malicious calumnies," " Ridiculous drivel lings," " Absurd rhodomontade," " Vile as persions," are some of the amenities of literature culled from Indian journals (such as the Friend of India) relative to what I have previously written ; and similarly gentle re monstrances will doubtless be issued with re ference to the present work.

My justification is not for such as use those terms — 'for such as will not see, nay, possibly cannot sec— but for that portion of the press and public of Eng- X

PREFACE.

. land which can and will see. Let but tha press and that public receive these Tropical Sketches with as much favour as Forest Life in Ceylon was received, and I shall care little for the pop-gun salutes of anonymous correspondents in Indian journals, or the more for midable broadsides of then* editorial columns.* * For misrepresentation in Ceylon and India, I was prepared, but I confess I was not prepared for misrepre sentation in New York. In Mr. Mitchell's paper, Tlte Citizen, an account was given, early in the present year, of my description of Indian Coolies and their treatment on the coffee-estates, which was as far from the truth in its inferences, as it was from being a just representation of my views in its statements. Chelsea, October, 1854. TEOPICAL SKETCHES; OK, REMINISCENCES OF AN INDIAN JOURNALIST

Chapter I. The Colonial Newspaper

" Nothing, sir, can be more foolish," said my uncle. We were at the moment seated in his office in the Fort of Colombo, the ther mometer at ninety degrees in the shade. He was one of those bald, apparently irascible but really benevolent, men, who wax red at the least provocation, and who constantly rub their shining phrenological developments, guiltless of hair, with their handkerchiefs, when excited. '*OI . I. B He had just given me a long dissertation on the evils of that desire for change, which young men so often exhibit, and was now winding up his discourse. " Nothing, sir, can be more foolish. You give up a flourishing estate, bright prospects — " " The leeches and solitude, the coolies and the lonely bunga low," I added. " Pshaw ! what are these ?" was the reply; "trifles not worth naming.

You give up, I say, the prospect of a fortune, and for what ? to edit a miserable newspaper that nobody reads." " It has four hundred and eighty-seven subscribers," said I, inter rupting him, — for, where the honour of the Ceylon Herald was at stake, I thought myself bound to take up arms. " Four hundred fiddlesticks !" quoth my uncle, waxing wroth, as he tried to puff his cigar again ; but the light had long been extinguished, and the at tempt was vain. " Four hundred fiddlesticks ! it's easy to make out a case." " And then, with management, I see no reason why we should not have seven hundred subscribers in a short time. They say the Observer has more," I added. " With your management and with your pen," said he, " it must be a thousand soon ;" and there he paused. I puffed my cigar, sipped a little more brandy and water, smiled, and said nothing.

I had but just completed my nineteenth year, when I first landed in Ceylon. Two years of jungle life, spent in the management of a coffee-estate, had made me melancholy, moping, dull, a bookworm, and a man of reverie. I determined I would stand it no longer. I had before me an offer to under take the editorship of the Ceylon Herald, at a small salary, it is true, but then the salary was to increase with the circulation. I was in all the budding glory of twenty-one, and I had made up my mind to try my hand at leading articles for the future, leaving coffee estates and coolies, bugs and bungalows, to the poor denizens of the forest. My letters from the jungle had always appeared in conspicuous positions in the Colombo papers — the italics, the notes of admiration and exclamation, the dashes and the Greek and Latin quotations, always carefully at tended to.

My contributions were evidently valuable, why then should not my leading articles succeed ? I knew a great deal about e coffee, much about horseflesh, more about ele phants, and most of all about cigars, and I saw no reason why I should not succeed. When I had altered the ode* of Horace to suit the colonial secretary and Ceylon, asking him, in elegant Latinity, why he hastened to destroy the island, by loving it too well, had not the joke called forth an angry correspondence between Philos and Milos, as to the au thorship ? Why, then, should I not succeed ? Such were the reflections that passed through my mind — such the questions I asked myself, when my uncle observed, " AVith your man agement and with your pen, the number of subscribers will soon be a thousand." " I do not see why it should not," I answered in wardly, but a smile was the only external evidence of the thought.

" Dr. Tweezer," said I, " assures me that the coffee-mania can not last much longer — that the days of its success will soon be ended — and that it would be folly to trust to it alone." " Dr Tweezer * The eighth ode of the first book, commencing — " Lydia, die, per omnes Te Deos oro, Sybarin cur properas amando Perdere ?" &c. has his money largely embarked in sugar planting," was my uncle's reply, " no wonder he distrusts coffee." " Well, but, my dear uncle," I observed, determined to put an end to this unpleasant scene by soothing him, " Mr. Pinto, the Portuguese agent, looked after the estate very well before I came ; he can return to it now, and I will run up often, to see how he gets on." " Well, well, you are determined on it, I see," said the old man kindly, " and must have your way as usual.

I wish you every success with the paper, my boy ; and, between us, we must see that Pinto minds what he's about — he will be honest as long as he's well looked after." So saying, my uncle gave a final polish to his head with his handkerchief, and threw the end of his cigar into the fire. The office of the Ceylon Herald was situ ated in one of the narrow streets of the Fort of Colombo, a street principally occupied by Portuguese shoemakers and tailors, and the junior officers of Her Majesty's hundred and forty-fourth, then quartered in Colombo. The floor and the roof were both constructed of red tiles ; those beneath our feet flat for walking on, those above us curved, in order to lap over each other and exclude the rain. A small verandah formed a kind of vestibule to the office, the roof being supported by rude wooden pillars, once painted, although what colour they had been painted it would not be easy to discover by examining them.

Of the large room which formed the front of the house, opening out on the verandah, a portion near the window was screened off to form the sacred chamber of the editor, whilst the part near the door, which was always open, was allotted to the solitary clerk who received the advertisements, watched then* insertion, com puted their cost, and made out the bills. In the adjoining chamber stood the type-cases of the compositors, so that the editor had but to pass from his little screened-off chamber into the adjoining room to discover his editorials cut up into convenient lengths, and being " done into" print by the swarthy fingers of Portuguese and Singhalese compositors. Over these reigned the head printer, Don Gonzalez Antonio de Perez, a Portuguese descendant, as black and ugly as the swarthiest borderer on Lake Tschad, in the centre of Africa.

I never knew the real name of Mr. Perez, as we called him, until he laid a note on my table one day, asking whether he, " Mr. Don Gonzalez Antonio De Perez," might have " the supreme felicity and honour" of seeing me, " when he consummated his nuptials with Miss Felicia Maria St. Anna Hernandez," as he ex pressed it. Mr. Perez, I say, was the presiding genius of the dining-room ; that is, of what had been the dining-room, but was now the compositors' office. In shirt-sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, revealing two slender black arms, and in pantaloons once white, did Mr. Perez administer rebuke and commendation as he listed to those beneath him. He prided himself on his know ledge of English, which, however, he spoke after the Portuguese fashion — he had been reading and misunderstanding Carlyle, and prided himself on being one of those intensely earnest, practical men, who cannot understand a joke, and who talk of their " mission."

Of voluble tongue, fluent in English, in Portu guese, in Singhalese, he talked and worked incessantly, never for a moment idle, never for a moment at rest. An invaluable man under the circumstances, but obstinate as a donkey. compositors' office opened into a paved yard behind, in the centre of which stood a melancholy-looking jack-fruit tree, with a few dark, scanty leaves adorning its branches ; so little green, so much black, about its trunk and limbs, that one might almost conclude at a glance it had been nourished with ink in stead of water. In an apartment of the back premises, which had once been a kitchen, stood the printing-press, doubtless of a similar form to that which William Caxton, of venerable memory, had used when he set up his marvellous engine in Westminster, " hard by the cathe dral," so clumsy, so awkward in its wooden massiveness, did it appear.

Brushes and buckets ; piles of paper and of papers ; dark, ink -bespattered boys, looking forward to a future intimately connected with the composing-stick, and two or three lazy.lounging Singhalese messengers, completed the furniture, animate and inanimate, of the Ceylon Herald office. Totally ignorant of the mysteries of print ing — innocent of the difference between a com posing-stick and a galley, between Great Pri mer type and Diamond — I seated myself at little table in the mysterious office, sole manager and director, editor, corrector of the press, accountant, cashier, treasurer, and letter writer, of the newspaper and of the printing office. When men take upon themselves employ ments and responsibilities, of the very nature of which they are ignorant, says some cynical critic (determined to put down this loose system of writing, these random sketches without statistics), they may expect to fail — no other result can be anticipated.

Quite correct, O critic ! — but, as applied to the present instance, altogether wrong ; for, though I made many blunders — ridiculous blunders some of them — displayed much ignorance, and endured much sarcasm from the better-appointed Observer, I did not fail. The exception proves the ride, argues the critic, and thus we are both sa tisfied. Fortunately, the paper was published but twice a-week, so that I had ample time to write leaders and correct the proof-sheets, to write letters to myself and answer them in the editorial columns, to note down answers to imaginary corespondents in my liveliest vein, and to go through all the other business of the editor of a " pushing" colonial newspaper. I have still, however, the liveliest recollection of the arduous labour involved in the correction of the press, of the way in which I w*as interrupted, in the midst of my profoundest articles, by the incessant talking of Mr. Perez, and the loud tones in which he reproved the habitual lazi ness of " black men," as he w*as fond of call ing the Singhalese.

The Portuguese descendants fared better at his hands — his heart, which opened to a pair of pantaloons, was cold as ice to the camboy.* " Mr. Perez," said I, calling him one day, when I had been elaborating awould-be brilliant article on some local triviality, illustrated by quo tations from Cicero and Bacon — " Mr. Perez, I really cannot get on, with the noise from the compositors' room. I have been obliged to lay down my pen twice," I continued — suiting the action to the word, and throwing the pen on the paper (I had cleaned it beforehand for the purpose) — " I have been obliged to lay down my pen twice in the course of this single * The cloth wrapped round the lags of the Singhalese, like a scanty petticoat, is so called. article, in consequence of the incessant loud talking." " I shall see to him, saar," said Mr. Perez, showing his white teeth, in a condescending smile.

" That new compositor, the Singhalese man, Hathacatarr, he's a plenty loud talker ; he's a talker enough for twenty men. He doesn't understand when I go tell him, that's no way — work, I say, well first, talk after — but he's all the same as one lunatic, he hears, but does not see or comprehend." And so saying, Mr. Perez returned to create more noise than ever. First, he attacked Hathacatarr in Singhalese, asking why he (Mr. Perez) and his office should be disgraced by a black jabberer who did not understand his work ? A Portuguese compositor offered his opinion on the subject in choice Portuguese. Hathacatarr replied in Singhalese, and a coun tryman of his spoke in his defence ; two new combatants joined in the war of words incon tinently, and louder than ever rose the din and the confusion ; whilst above all rang clearly the commanding voice of Mr. Perez, shouting, " Silence, saar !" to each in turn, without re ference to distinction of race.

Not only was my work put an end to, and an eloquent pero ration nipped in the bud, in which " Justice and Truth, twin goddesses," were feelingly ap pealed to, but I felt convinced too that all work in the adjoining office was suspended for the time being. I, therefore, rose from my chair, coughed leisurely, walked slowly into the compositors' apartment, asked Mr. Perez whether the advertisement relative to the recent samples of coffee from Ruminacadde had been " set up" in fancy type, and walked about, when the question had been answered, looking particularly at nothing. The tumult was stilled, and did not break out again for a time ; but I took care, for the future, to write my principal leading articles at home, and not to call Mr. Perez in, when I wanted to put an end to the noise in the compositors' room.

" What is this, Mr. Perez ?" said I, as I made my way hurriedly into the office one day, shortly after my installation, and seated myself at my editorial desk. A " proof," or first copy in print, of an article written the preceding evening lay before me, and there was something really distressing in seeing my well-turned sentences (as I considered them) upset and made nonsense of, by ignorant and unskilful compositors. It is true the Observer had pointed out, the evening before, some unfortu nate mistake I had made in writing about something I did not understand ; my temper was slightly ruffled — but there was really enough in the document on the desk to make any man, however equable his temper, annoyed and irritable. Hence my question. I had commenced a leading article thus : — " When Æsop described the countryman praying to Jove to help him out of his difficulty — a difficulty which the suppliant easily extricated himself from subsequently, by put ting his shoulder to the wheel — the fabulist was but suggesting a truth of universal appli cation ; a great and important truth, too often lost sight of.

The coffee-planters, who hold such angry meetings at Kandy, who memori alize a Parliament that cares nothing for them, and are then angry at not being heard, forget, it is to be feared, this old fable, with its wise, practical application. Sympathizing, as we do, with the feelings produced by the injustice which has been done them," &c, &c. Such were the sentences which I wrote : the printer's version of them was as follows : — " Vihen Ssoqs desunvir/ the cum!vqum Pva qung !o Foue !o helh hun ont of tus biffunllq — x diffunlhq mhicl the xupp/uonh uxily in!vu a!ed humulf i\xm xubseynmtly, ly ptfttiny tus s?onk-/e* to the ?«lul. He falmPxt mus lmt xuqqextmq, a tmnth of mnusal app!ica?nm — x qme! nud im&or!ant tunth tu of!m hint xqht of. &e coffee-ptanters mho hotb x«cb auqnj mutinys ot Kandy, mho numorialze a Pavlia muit thot cums mtbinj fm them, &, me thum auqrj at mt bmy heanl, forje!.

I is to lu jeareb, tlim \\d j able ?rit&itimixe prac!icab appzcalim. 9ympattuzmj us me do mit2 !he folmjs prob mud by the wjustme whicf &ax bun dun than," &c, &c. " What is this, Mr. Perez ?" I naturally asked, as I perused the above unintelligible do cument. Mr. Perez showed his teeth, according to his wont — as fine a set of white teeth, I will venture to assert, as any to be found out of Africa — and peering at the proof, shook his head reprovingly. " Plenty bad work this," said he, at length ; " that Hathacatarr doesn't know he's business — idle man, too, plenty idle — pah! Singhalese; what you expect, saar ? These black men have no mission, and so they don't fulfill none." " Well, but," I replied, with all the quiet composure I could summon, " if Hathacatarr composes in this style, the sooner his place is better filled the better for all of us.

Let him put up the large type advertisements, not my editorials, for the future." " I am in the look-out for a good, earnest man, saar," was Mr. Perez' reply ; " a Portu guese man that knows he's mission. I will let you know plenty soon, when I have catched him. That Mr. Fonseca" (the clerk) "hire Hathacatarr ; but what he can know ? Mr. Fon seca don't understand a galley from a printing press." The concluding sentence was uttered in a low voice, for Mr. Fonseca was within hearing of loud conversation ; Mr. Perez con cluded with a subdued laugh, smothered in his throat, which showed the brilliant teeth more alarmingly than ever. " Send Hathaca tarr to me," said I to him, as he retired, whilst I retained the proof. Hathacatarr, a mild-looking Singhalese, of small size, with spectacles on nose, and a comb, of larger dimensions than usual, projecting four inches above his head, soon made his ap pearance, ready to enter upon a voluble expla nation.

" Is that your proof, Hathacatarr ?" 1 asked, in Singhalese. " Yees, zurr," he commenced, in reply, for he disdained the vernacular, and would speak English, though he could not understand all that was said to him in that language ; " yees, zurr ; him is mine. I tell every thing to you, zurr. Mr. Perez, zurr, he hate me all the same as one big snake. Why ? because I tell him truth, I no tell lies. He make de boy Rickawille 'tribute (distribute*) all my type when I go home plenty early yesterday, with Mr. Fonseca's leave. Every body know, zurr, Rickawille not know him business yet. Him put d's in the hole for b's and y's for and he make all tubsy-turby — I not know where get one letter when I want him. I put my finger in for one a, and I get one æ ; I want t, I get the note for tara-tara-mation (admiration).

How I do well, zurr ? You tell Mr. Perez let me 'tribute my * To distribute the type, is to put each letter back into its own compartment in the compositor's tray, or " case," after it has been used. type, no let de boy Rickawille touch my box, and I do plenty good." Such were the difficulties of newspaper editing in Colombo at the time of which I write ; every line had to be inspected by my-' self — advertisements, domestic occurrences, local reports, editorials, all — before the broad sheet was issued to the public eye. I had to see that the ship which indicated a shipping advertisement, (and served besides to fill up the advertisement columns) — the horse which pranced before the notice of a sale of Arabs, mules, or donkeys — the house which smoked, European like, above the few lines that indi cated that a bungalow was to be let or sold, were all in their proper places, not turned upside down, or put in wrong places, a horse substi tuted, for instance, for a ship, or a house for a horse.

Everything demanded the editor's eye — he was responsible for all — and it, therefore, may be easily conceived that his situation was by no means a sinecure. The arrival and departure of the English mails were, like picking time on the coffee estates, the great seasons of bustle and activity in our little office. The getting of the English papers on the arrival of the mail was by no means an easy matter. The clerks from the respective offices were first dispatched to the little post-office Window, behind which the Post-Master-General himself laboured, like a little Hercules, at un wieldy bags of newspapers and letters ; whilst his assistants, Europeans, native Portuguese and Singhalese, broke open boxes with praise worthy diligence, and scattered their contents about the floor. ' Great was the commotion within, copious the perspiration, numerous the ejaculations — but far greater was the excite ment, the commotion, the pushing and the crushing, the exclamation and the heat, with out.

" I really cannot do more than I am doing, gentlemen," urged the post-master, his coun tenance burning in a fiery glow, that illumined his fine Roman nose like a coat of scarlet. " I really cannot do more than I am doing, gentlemen. Every one will get what he wants ultimately, if you have but a little patience, but things must take their ordinary course " — that ordinary course apparently being that all the letters and papers, as soon as they arrived, should be strewn about the floor and on the tables of the post-office in much-abused confusion. Outside the little window, anxious faces, with and without spectacles, peer eagerly into the sanctum, as if desirous of recognizing their property amid a thousand others. The aide-de-camp of the governor swears terribly because he is kept waiting for his own and the governor's letters and newspapers — the clerks from the various offices more mildly discuss the chances of a speedy departure in English, in Portuguese, and in Singhalese — the two newspaper editors, having hastened to the assistance of their clerks, drawn to the post-office by the delay, stand, most eager and most anxious, side by side, the Observer and the Herald, the Herald and the Observer in friendly rivalry, polite and affable to each other, strange though it may appear, yet each intensely desirous of receiving his papers and having his Extraordinary first out — joking the while, notwithstanding, at the scene and at the actors in it.

" Hot work," observes the Observer, as he casts an anxious glance into the mysterious chamber, vainly essaying to catch the postc master's . eye, and with a glance assure him that old animosities, for the time being, are ended. " The newspapers certainly ought to be supplied first," replies the Herald, "be cause they are supplied pro bono publico." " I really cannot do more than I am doing, gentlemen," replies the post-master, groaning. He is a public functionary peculiarly assailable by the press, and the Herald has been regarded for years as the government paper, on the strength of having once, in times gone by, borrowed a printing press from the government establishment. " The governor is waiting for his dispatches," growls the aide-de camp, as he flattens his nose against the wooden frame of the open window, the words booming distinctly into the busy chamber.

" No one is more anxious that the governor should have his dispatches at the earliest moment than I am, Mr. Tallbovs," is the post-master's reply. At length the desired newspapers are found ; Observer and Herald are supplied simultaneously, that there may be no imputation of unfair play or of favouritism. With Chinese umbrellas (made of paper, and flat on the top, as figured on tea-chests) over their heads, the editors march through the sun to their respective offices, and then great is the excite ment, and the activity of every individual in those offices. Mr. Perez has been ten times outside the verandah to see if Mr. Fonseca or myself be visible with the important papers. The Monthly Times — a summary of the Eu ropean intelligence brought by the mail, and published in London for Indian subscribers — is at once opened.