Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/33

 Indore, Bhopál, Berár, Haidarábád, Mysore, and Travancore, the Company spoke through its Residents or other agents with commanding authority.

The disposition of the new Governor-General appeared to mark him out for the role of a peace minister. But by the not uncommon paradox of fate the pacific Governor-General had hardly taken the oaths of office when he found himself confronted with the possibilities—soon to become certainties—of hostilities more arduous and more expensive than had been dreamt of in the worst nightmare of the most thriftily-minded magnate at the East India House. The period of Lord Amherst's rule was not barren of domestic incidents, if by the word 'incidents' we may be permitted to describe the stirring of tendencies destined to grow before long into great measures. But his term will be memorable in history for a great war, and a glorious enterprise of arms. The expeditions against Burma marked the renewal, after the repose of thousands of years, of the march of the Aryan eastwards. Many centuries before Christ, the race had poured through the passes of the Hindu Kush into the land of the Five Rivers; had settled in the vast expanse of the Ganges valley, and pushed on wherever the soil was tempting in the highlands and coast tracts of the Deccan. But having thrust aside the peoples of other origin the Aryans appeared content to rest. The mountainous region which divides India from Burma and from China was the limit of their wanderings. Isolated immigrations