Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/51

Rh abolition of cruel rites, and the reform of the domestic and marriage customs which lay at the root of infanticide in Northern India. Sailing down the Indus, he circled round by Bombay, the Straits Settlements, and Tenasserim, back to Calcutta in March 1850.

His famous Punjab Minutes have, perhaps, rendered that province a too familiar instance. Let me therefore merely enumerate the journeys by which he brought the newly conquered provinces of Burma under his control. In 1852, during the crisis of the Burmese war, he sailed from Calcutta in defiance of the monsoon, to visit and encourage the army amid the swamps of the Irawadi. Those who know what Rangoon is in August, and what the Bay of Bengal can be during that month, will realize what the journey meant to a man already broken down by the climate and over-work, and subject to constant fever. But however severe his own sufferings, he had abundant energy to see that the troops were clothed, and housed, and fed, in a way which contrasted strongly with their condition during Lord Amherst's Burmese War, in 1825, and which saved thousands of British lives during the campaign.

The blow having been delivered, and Burma annexed in December 1852, Lord Dalhousie set forth in the following February to study for himself the best means of governing it. But instead of