Page:Sir Henry Lawrence, the Pacificator.djvu/179

170 not the inducement to offer to a foreign soldier for special fidelity and long service.

'PS. While on the subject I must give your lordship a proof of the estimate in which "the salt water" (Kála Pane) is held even by the most rough-and-ready portion of the native army. Last week an invalid subadár of the Bombay 18th Native Infantry was with me for an hour or more. Among other matters, I asked him about foreign service, especially about Aden, whence he was invalided. With a sort of horror, he referred to being restricted to three gallons of water daily. I asked him whether he would prefer 100 rupees a month at Aden, or 50 rupees at Baroda (where he had just before told me there was much fever). He replied, "50 rupees at Baroda." I then said, "or 125 rupees at Aden?" His answer was to the effect, "I went where I was ordered, but life is precious, anything in India is better than wealth beyond sea." And such, I am convinced, is the general Hindu feeling. The man was a Brahmin, but a thorough loyalist. ...'

On May 2 he wrote: —

'I have the honour to acknowledge your lordship's letter of April 27, just received, and am glad to find that what I wrote of the 48th Regiment yesterday quite meets your views. I fear to increase alarm and suspicion, and therefore do nothing not absolutely necessary.

'The officers of H.M.'s 32nd now sleep near their lines, as they ought always to have done. Two guns of a native battery and thirty horsemen are also in their lines, so that they are a little army in themselves, and have the means of communicating with their neighbours.

'I have no reason to doubt the fidelity of the Artillery, though much has been done to disgust many of the native officers, because they don't understand our mounted drill.