Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/211

 could not tie a knot nor pick up a pebble from the ground without shewing a difference in their mode of doing it. Yet they are a civilized and a most polished race, and were as much so two thousand years ago, when we were barbarians as they are now. They are gifted with a wonderful power of self-possession, and their intercourse with one another is the very beau ideal of good manners; diffidence or bashfulness are unnatural to them, and the child of six years of age, the adult of fourteen, and the man of sixty, are endowed with an ease and grace of manner throughout all castes, such as would be envied by the ornaments of European society.

The inhabitants of Upper India are a race very superior to the Bengalies, being tall, stout, and manly, very handsome in figure, and in feature as different from the African as these are from the European. Every man goes out armed with his spear, his matchlock, or his sword and shield, or loaded bludgeon, and looks down upon his Bengali compatriot with slight and contempt. The inferior animals are as superior as the natives,and the cattle of the upper provinces are alone found fit for artillery draught.

Much has been written upon India, calculated to intimidate strangers, but I believe life is as safe from violence as in any part of the world. Ladies travel unprotected from one end of it to the other.