Twenty-one years in India

Preface

A i^Ew words in the way of preface may not be out of place. I am aware that much has been written about India late years, and that there may not seem to be a demand for another book on that subject. I have only to say, that much remains unknown still to our people here at home about that country and people, and about the great work going on there. It fell to my lot in the providence of God to be associated with the work of our Church there in its very beginning, and what I have written may be of some value farther on when the history of our Mission in India is written up. I have seen the work expand from its very first inception to the great proportions it has now attained. God has indeed done great things for us ; but there are undoubtedly greater things in store for us in the future. I wish to record with others the goodness of the Lord seen in com-

4 Preface.

moil with them. Perhaps something here mentioned may not have been mentioned by others, and so may contribute to the general fund of knowledge which has accumulated as the years have been going by. I feel it, indeed, to be a very great honor to have had a part with our noble band of workers for Christ in India. If what I have wTitten shall in some little degree even contribute to the advancement of India's evangelization, I shall feel myself amply repaid.

J. L,. Humphrey.

L1TT1.E Fai,i,s, n. y.

Contents

CHAPTBR PAGE

I. Introductory, Topography, Scenery, the Way

People Live, Etc., ii

CHAPTER I. Introductory Chapter

India is a very interesting country; but few who have not visited it, or lived in it, can realize how interesting it really is.

In past ages it has been thought of as a veritable El Dorado or a kind of fairy land, possessing fabulous wealth. Solomon's ships visited India, and brought back gold, precious stones, and peacocks' feathers. Christopher Columbus aspired to find a Western pasage to India; but instead he discovered this continent, and opened up a new world. He thought it was India, as he called the people he found here Indians.

The country is about i,8oo miles at its extreme points from north to south, and about 1,500 miles from east to west, not including Burmah. It contains a superficial area of 1,860,000 square

II miles. In 1901, when the last census was taken, the population was 294,382,676, nearly one-fifth of the population of the entire world. The great mass of the people are very poor. The wage of a common laborer is not more than two dollars a month, he finding himself. The population, under the paternal care of the British Government is increasing, and one of the great problems confronting the Government is how to improve the condition of the great wage-earning class of the population.

The Secretary of State for India, Lord George Hamilton, recently said in Parliament, "That so far as eighty-three per cent of the population was concerned, there was a clear and indisputable evidence that their condition during the last twenty years had improved." He also stated, "That the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, has recently taken the greatest pains to ascertain what the average income per head of the agricultural population now is, contrasted with twenty years ago; and he finds that in 1880 it was rupees 18 per head; in 1900, notwithstanding the increase

TwKNTY-ONi: YKARS in InDIA. 1 3

in the population, it was rupees 20 per head, not a great increase, but still an advance. During that period the income per head of the non-agricultural population is estimated to have risen from rupees 27 to rupees 30. The total of land under cultivation in 1880 was 194,000,000 of acres; it is now 217,000,000 of acres. In the yield per acre we see a marked increase; in 1880 the yield of food crops per acre was 730 pounds, in 1900 it was 840 pounds."

Sir William Hunter, in his work "Our Indian Empire," says that not much more than four per cent of the people live in the cities and larger towns, showing that the population of India is largely rural, and as a whole very poor ; but there is actual improvement in their condition, as these figures show.

The country is crossed from east to west between the twenty-third and twenty-fifth parallels of latitude, by the Vindiya range of mountains, at the base of which flows the Nerbudda River. The country to the north is usually called Hindustan, and that to the south is the Deccan. Stan means place, Hindustan, therefore, means place or country of the Hindus.

Two great rivers take their rise in the Himalayan range of mountains, and have much to do in fixing the general outlines and topography of the country to the north, or Hindustan proper. One of these, the Ganges, flows from the mountain range on the north to the southeast and empties into the Bay of Bengal; the other, the Indus, flows to the southwest and empties into the Arabian Sea, or Persian Gulf, at Karachee. These magnificent rivers drain and irrigate nearly one-half of the entire country.

The great Gangetic Plain stretches away from Calcutta to the northwest to Peshawar on the Indus, 1, 800 miles, while the Indus extends away to the southwest to the Arabian Sea.

These plains are, on an average, three hundred miles in width, and they constitute the garden of India. On the north we have the grand Himalayan chain of mountains, with the snowy range towering up in the heavens and sparkling in the sunlight with indescribable beauty. In the cold

Twe:nTy-one: Ykars in India. ic,

J season as you journey to the Northwest on the Grand Trunk Road, a metaled road all the way from Calcutta to Peshawur, i,8oo miles, without doubt the finest road in the world, or by railway, this snowy range may be seen for hundreds of miles of the journey. This vast plain continues practically up to the base of the mountains, having only a slight ascent for a few miles before reaching the mountains proper, and so gradual is the ascent that it is hardly noticeable to the ordinary observer. There is not much hilly or rolling country through which you pass as you approach the range itself. At the foot of the mountains is a strip of country slightly declining towards the plains, called the Bhaber, or waterless forest, as the word means ; that is, water can not be reached by digging wells. The Bhaber is from ten to fifteen miles in width; then we strike the Tarai, where the water is very near the surface, and is covered with tall grass and more or less with forests.

This section Is very malarious during the rainy season and for some months afterward.

i6 Twenty-one Years in India.

Many wild animals inhabit this region, such as bears, leopards, tigers, and even wild elephants are found here. The great thoroughfares from the seaports to the northwest, pass through these plains. It may be imagined that they are monotonous to the traveler; but such is not the case, however.

The landscape is usually attractive, and often especially so during the cold season when travelers visit India. The palm tree with its feathery top and unique leaves and branches, dots the expanse and constantly reminds you that you are in a tropical land — a land strangely unlike your own. The great Gangetic Valley is for the most part highly cultivated and densely populated.

In Upper India you will see vast fields of wheat, rice, millet, dal, gram, potatoes, sugarcane, and tobacco, and many other purely Indian cereals. In some parts you find indigo, poppies, and cotton being cultivated to a large extent. Potatoes, late years, are being cultivated extensively both in the mountains and plains. At the foot of the mountains, in the locality I have spoken of as the Bhaber, large fields of mustard may be seen in the proper season, and the air will be scented with the perfume of its bright yellow flowers, lor a long distance. Mustard-seed yields a kind* of oil extensively used and very highly valued by the natives. Wheat is much grown, especially in the Northwest. The landscape is much broken by numerous groves of mango, tamarind, pepul, and orange trees. These groves are usually contiguous to the villages and cities, and, being set out with regularity, they add much to the beauty of the country, and serve to break up what would otherwise be very tame and monotonous.

There are no homes scattered about over the country as with us. The people live in cities or villages. In the villages the houses are squalid and uninviting. The walls are of mud and covered with grass, without windows, or floors, other than the earth itself. There is not much order in the location of houses in a village. A village is simply a collection of miserable mud huts, thrown in about as it happens; the streets have to take their chances, winding about, and 2 i8 TwKnTy-one: Years in India.

finding a passage through if possible. As a rule they are filthy and sadly lacking in all sanitary arrangements. They are likely to abound with ill-kept dogs, goats, cattle, and naked children. You will not often see swine about, as they are only kept by the very lowest class of the people, and not by the Hindus or Mohammedans at all. In the cities the buildings are superior to those in villages. Generally, they are built of brick and covered with tiles or cement. The houses are not arranged at all according to our ideas of convenience and comfort. The rooms are generally small, low between joints, without windows, ill ventilated, and quite without all furnishings, except in the case of the very well-to-do.

A small piece of matting serves in place of a chair and for a bed. They do not have chairs or tables in their houses. They sleep, sit, and take their meals on the floor or ground.

They have no knives, forks, or spoons; but make their fingers do service in place of these. A house is not to them what it Is to us in our cold climate. The most of the year it is very warm, and at no time is the cold excessive, and for the largest part of the year it is uniformly pleasant, no storms, night or day, for weeks and months even, so they live much in the open air. They wear light clothing; the poorer people clothe themselves very scantily.

I have now described Upper India, or Hindustan proper. I have mentioned its two great plains, that of the Ganges and Indus. Much of India is a vast plain. We have, in addition to these plains, the great sandy desert on the west, and an elevated tract called Central India. The Deccan, or South India, has a chain of mountains on its northern boundary running nearly parallel with the Vindiya range, to the south of which stretches a table-land of triangular form, terminating at Cape Comorin with the Western Ghauts on the opposite coast. Between the Ghauts and the sea lies a narrow belt of land which runs around the whole peninsula.

The soil is generally productive, only requiring water to produce good crops. Indeed everything grows with great luxuriance in India when the rainfall is normal. When the fall is less than normal the price of grain rises in the market, and the people begin to feel the pressure of want. If the rainfall is materially lessened, and this continues for two or three seasons in succession, it produces famine with all its attendant horrors.

From time immemorial the country has been subject to these calamities. To obviate them, or to lessen their influence, an extensive system of irrigation has been carried out by the Government, at an immense outlay, and by this means a considerable part of the country is protected from this calamity. In 1900 there were 180,- 150,454 acres of land cultivated; 31,544,000 were rendered safe from drought by irrigation. We now have over 27,000 miles of railway spread over the country. These, too, are a great protection from the evils of famine, as by means of them the surplus production of one part of the country can be rapidly removed to another part in a time of emergency.

There is a large amount of wheat grown in some parts of the country ; about thirteen bushels to the acre would be regarded a fair yield. The exports of India in 1900 were 77,950,000 pounds sterling, $399,750,000. Imports were 61,113,000 sterling, or $355,565,000. The Government of India is a very paternal government, and in every way in its power seeks to improve the condition of the people.

There are three seasons in India, the hot and rainy season, which begins about the middle of June and continues until the middle or end of September. Then begins the cold season, which up country is almost uniformly pleasant and delightful. The hot season begins in March or early in April and continues until the rains set in, in June or July. It is extremely hot during this season. The heat is somewhat modified by the rainfall, but the humidity of the atmosphere makes the heat even more trying to many, than the hot season proper.

Chapter II

Appointed a Missionary to India, Voyage, and Arrival in Calcutta.

In 1854, Dr. Durbin, Secretary of our Missionary Society, published a call for two young men to go out to India. It was felt that the time had arrived when w^e as a Church should enter upon this work in that country. It was then thought that they would be desired to go out the following year. I had been deeply interested in this subject, for some time felt that God had called me to this work. After much deliberation I responded to this call and signified my willingness to go if needed. I heard nothing from this until September, 1856, when Bishop Simpson notified me that I was accepted for India, and would be expected to sail in May or June following. I was stationed at Malone, in Northern New York, at the time, and this arrangement would enable me to finish out my year before leaving. A few months before the Rev. WilHam Butler, of the New England Conference, had been appointed superintendent, and had gone out by the way of England to visit friends, and to consult with missionary secretaries and friends there as to the portion of India it would be best for us to occupy. He arrived in Calcutta about the time I received my appointment, and after most careful consideration and consultation with missionary friends and secretaries, he resolved to locate in Bareilly, the capital of the Province of Rohilcund, in the Northwest. It was in his plan to occupy Oudh, to the east of Rohilcund, and probably would have settled in Lucknow, the capital of Oudh, if he could have procured a residence there; but failing in this he located in Bareilly in January, 1857. Rev. Ralph Pierce, of Moira, N. Y., had received his appointment to India some months before I received mine. His wife was an adopted daughter of Dr. and Mrs, J. T. Peck, afterward Bishop Peck. I left Malone on the 24th day of May, and after a few days in New York, we all, accompanied by Dr.

and Mrs. Peck, Dr. Durbin, and Rev. D. Terry, went to Boston, where farewell services were held on Sunday. On that very day the mutiny occurred in Bareilly. On Monday we sailed, our party consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Pierce and their little babe; Mrs. Owens, wife of Dr. Owens, of the Presbyterian Mission of Allahabad; Mrs. Humphrey, and myself. Our voyage, though long and tedious, was on the whole a pleasant one, and we improved our time in the study of the language, and, with Mrs. Owen to direct us, we succeeded in laying a good foundation, which was a very great help to us after our arrival in Calcutta. We learned the alphabet, read and translated several of the first chapters of Matthew's Gospel. A very pleasant incident occurred when we were about twenty degrees south of the Equator. We sighted a ship from Liverpool, bound to Australia ; the day was fine, and the sea fairly smooth, and we came near enough to communicate by signals. The captain of the English ship invited our captain to take his passengers and come on board their ship and dine with them.

Upon our concurrence, he accepted the invitation, and we had a most enjoyable time. They had a large number of passengers, and it did not take us long to become acquainted. We learned that they were from Liverpool, and left about the same time we left Boston, so we did not have much news to communicate to them, nor they much to give us; but we had many things to talk about, so the two hours we passed on board their ship flew by very quickly, and the memory of them remained with us for many a day. Some of the passengers we met that day on the Southern Cross, the name of their ship, wrote to us in India, and for some years we maintained a very pleasant correspondence. Our course lay about four hundred miles south of the Cape of Good Hope, and, it being winter on that side of the Equator, it was very rough and cold. Westerly winds prevailed in that latitude at that season of the year, and we were rapidly swept eastward on our course until we sighted the little island of St. Paul's, which was our signal to turn to the north up towards the Bay of Bengal.

On the i/th of September we sighted the hghtship, as we supposed, near the mouth of the Hooghly River, where we expected to get a pilot to take us up the river a Httle more than a hundred miles to Calcutta. We arrived in the night and cast anchor to wait for the morning. We could not get our pilot until morning, this we knew. Then we learned that bad news awaited us, but we could not find out what it was. We also found that we had gone to the wrong lightship. The one we wished to get was about forty miles away. It took us nearly all the next day to find out this much, and as the hours passed by we found that our anchor did not hold the ship, and we were surely drifting on to the sand-banks, and that we were already in a very dangerous proximity to them. We knew that many ships have been wrecked in this locality by being driven on the banks by the force of the current, and then capsizing. At one time it seemed that surely this would be our fate, but in the last moment, as it seemed to us, a breeze sprang up that filled our sails and took us out of our perilous position.

In a few hours we were at the proper place, and we again cast anchor and waited for the morning. With the dawn a pilot came aboard to take us up to Calcutta. The first thing he said, as he stepped onto our deck, was, "Well, I suppose you have heard the news?" "How should you suppose so ?" our captain replied ; "we have not seen a ship for more than two months." The pilot replied, "The country is in a turmoil, lots of massacres, everybody killed up country ; but here are the papers that will tell you all about it." With what eagerness we seized those papers! From them we learned of the mutiny in Bareilly, and that Mr. Butler had probably escaped to Naini Tal, a hill sanitarium in the mountains, about seventy miles to the north of Bareilly.

Mrs. Owen read of the outbreak in Allahabad, and of the destruction of the Mission premises, including her own home, but she could get no information in regard to her husband. Her state of mind can be imagined. Our progress up the river was slow, as our captain determined not to pay the price demanded for a steam tug to take us up, but to depend upon the wind and tide when they were favorable, anchoring when they were adverse. On the evening of the 21st of September we cast anchor off Garden Reach, just opposite the ex-king of Oudh's palace, about four miles below our proper moorings off the Strand at Calcutta. Here we had our first experience of the India climate, and of Calcutta mosquitos. It was intensely hot, and the mosquitoes, like the sepoys, thirsted for blood. It was a dreadful night, but, as all such nights do, it ended at last. We had letters of introduction to Messrs. Stewart & Young, merchants from Glasgow, who had shown Mr. Butler much kindness, and with whom he was in communication as far as was possible in those days. In course of the day they came on board and took us to their home for dinner, and then to a home they had secured and furnished for us. They knew it would be some months before we could proceed up country, and it was out of the question to find a boardinghouse for us, so they rented a comfortable house and furnished it with necessary furniture, and put one of their own tried and trusted servants in charge of it. In the evening they joined us in our home at tea. Their kindness to us during our stay in Calcutta, and for years afterward, we can never forget. They were noble men, and very dear friends as long as they lived, but they have both been dead for many years.

Our detention in Calcutta was a trial to us, but we could only make the best of it and wait patiently for the Lord to show us our way. It was a time of great excitement in Calcutta when we landed. A plot had just been discovered to murder all the foreign residents. A native prince then visiting Calcutta, had arranged to give a great entertainment in Botanical Gardens, which are about four miles on the opposite side of the river, but a heavy rain came on and prevented the people from going. Before the day ended it was learned that the sepoys had arranged to take advantage of the absence of the officers and residents, and mutiny and seize the fort and the mint, but the rain broke up all their plans. The native regiments implicated were immediately disarmed.

They were only permitted to carry their ramrods after that day. The king of Oudh had a few days before been locked up in the fort for fear of a movement among the natives for his restoration. There were many bad elements at work, and no one knew what might happen any hour.

We received much attention and kindness from missionaries and Christian friends. Mr. Butler had created a very favorable impression in Calcutta, and much interest was manifested in our proposed mission, and we were told that our progress would be watched with interest, and that it was hoped that the remarkable progress of our Church in the United States might even be surpassed in India. We were informed that great things w^ere expected of our Church in India. We immediately began the study of the language under a competent native teacher, and made as good use of our opportunities as we could to become acquainted with mission work as it was being conducted in Calcutta at that time. It was a time of anxiety; indeed, it was about the darkest period of the mutiny when we

JOEL JANVIER, BLIND AND AGED. (Native Minister, from the Presbyterian Mission in AUahabau arrived. The first English soldiers landed about the same time we did ; those who had been intercepted by Lord Canning at the Cape of Good Hope, who were on their way to China, just at that time; but things had begun to brighten a little. Already an avenging army was on the way to the Northwest, and arrangements were rapidly being made for another to follow, and the cheering news had just arrived that Delhi had fallen, and all were hoping that the worst was past, and so it proved. At the suggestion of our friend, Mr. Owen, we engaged Caleb, a young man of their Mission in Allahabad, as our teacher, whom we found well qualified for the position. He was a native Christian, and a special friend of Joel, who had been given to Mr. Butler as his assistant, by our Presbyterian brethren in Allahabad. Joel was with Mr. Butler in Bareilly, and was there when the mutiny broke out on the 31st of May, 1857. He escaped by climbing a tree near by, when the sepoys came and burned Mr. Butler's house, and Maria was killed by them. It can well be imagined that we were interested in every thing pertaining to Joel, and it was very pleasing to us to have Caleb, his friend, for our teacher. Under his instruction we made rapid progress, greatly to our advantage when, a few months later, we came to make the journey up country. The acquisition of the language is of the greatest importance to a missionary, and he can never do it so well as when he first arrives in the country.

If he puts it off, instead of growing less formidable it will become more so, and the probabilities are that he will never master it. I have often been asked if it is a difficult language to learn. I should say, not especially so; but it has some peculiarities that are only mastered by long study and practice. But most succeed, at least fairly well, who are determined to do it. We found that our detention in Calcutta need by no means be lost time ; it gave us the opportunity to become somewhat acquainted with the situation, greatly to our advantage in after years. We knew very little of India when we landed in Calcutta, and we devoted our best efforts to acquiring a knowledge of the people, the country, and the work we were entering upon. How strange everything seemed when we first landed ! The people seemed especially so ; some were dressed, but more were only very slightly so, to say the least. Strange sights were on every hand, and a jargon of sounds fell upon our ears. It seemed a new world to us, so very unlike anything we had ever seen before or imagined. Calcutta at that time presented strange contrasts of wealth and poverty, refinement and ignorance, of grandeur and squalor. These contrasts are still seen there, as they are in all large cities, especially in the East. It is, however, much improved from what it was at that time. It is now a fine city; it has many splendid public buildings and palatial private residences. The scene that presents itself on the Strand of an evening is one of great magnificence. On one side are the ships of all nations at anchor; on the other, the Maidan, or parade ground, with a line of fine business and private residences in the background, and the city lying farther back. Such a display of fine equipages as may be seen passing up and down at 3 about sundown,, or a little after, can hardly be seen anywhere in the world. The turnouts of \\ealthy natives, and the native princes with their high-bred Arab horses and livery-men in most gorgeous colors, present a most brilliant and showy scene indeed.

We derived great pleasure and profit from our intercourse with missionaries of different Churches. Among them I may mention such men as Dr. Duff, Mr. Lacroix, and Mullins, of the London Missionary Society, and many others. We visited the schools and colleges being conducted by missionaries in Calcutta, and also visited Christian villages and out-stations in the country round about; learned many things as to methods of mission work, that served us well in following years. We also took some lessons in street preaching at this time. The missionaries were somewhat divided on the subject. Dr. Duff was a strenuous advocate of education as a means of evangelization; but from the first it seemed clear to me that both were to be utilized to the fullest extent. And this was the view adopted by our Mission from the first. So far as

I know, we have never had the shghtest discussion as to preference of one of these over the other. We beHeve in both with all our hearts. I think at the present day nearly all missionaries do the same.

The Calcutta Missionary Conference was a great power in those days. This body did much in helping to shape the action of Government on many important subjects affecting the interest of the people. Lord Canning was governor-general, and was much criticised for lack of spirit in dealing with the situation in the early part of the outbreak. But general opinion has much changed in regard to his administration, which is now considered to have been judicious and dignified on the whole.

I shall never forget some of the addresses I heard Dr. Duff deliver in those days, especially one in the Free Church of Scotland, on the mutiny. I think it was the most eloquent address I have ever heard. I have never heard anything, from even Bishop Simpson in his best days, equaling it.

Early in February we began to consider the feasibility of undertaking the journey to Naini Tal. We were very anxious to make it before the extreme hot weather should set in, and Mr. Butler was very anxious to have us do so, that we together might lay our plans for opening our work in the plains. We soon had a communication from him proposing to meet us in Agra. It was thought that we might venture to undertake the journey with a fair degree of safety. But all means of travel wxre monopolized by the Government, it being a time of war; but we finally succeeded in arranging for coolies to propel us, we furnishing our own carriages.