Page:The life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (IA b21778401).pdf/104

74 scattered around it, and the ruins of Champenír City cumbered the base. In a more progressive society, this place, 2500 feet high, an cooler by 18° to 20° F., would have become a kind of sanitarium. But men, apparently, could not agree. When the Baroda races came round, Major C. Crawley, commanding the 4th Bombay Rifles, used, in consequence of some fancied slight, to openly ride out of cantonment; and Brigadier Gibbons, the commander, did noting for society. But the crowning excitement of the season was the report of Sir Charles Napier's battle of Miani (February 21st), followed by the affair of Dubba (March 25th), the "tail of the Afghan War." The account seemed to act as an electric shock upon the English frame, followed by a deep depression and a sense of mortal injury at the hands of Fate in keeping us out of the fray.

At length, in April, 1843, I obtained two months' leave of absence to the Presidency, for the purpose of passing an examination in Hindostani. The function was held at the Town Hall. Major-General Vans-Kennedy presided, a queer old man as queerly dressed, who had given his life to Orientalism, and who had printed some very respectable studies of Hinduism. The examining munshi, Mohammed "Mucklá," was no friend to me, because I was coached by a rival, old Dosabhai, yet he could not prevent my distancing a field of eleven. This happened on May 5th, and on May 12th I had laid in full supply of Gujarati books, and set out by the old road to rejoin.

If Baroda was dull and dreary during the dries, it was mortal during the rains. I had been compelled to change my quarters for a bigger bungalow, close to the bank of the mullah which bounded the camp to the east and fed the Vishwamitra. It was an ill-omened place; an English officer had been wounded in it, and the lintel still bore the mark of a sabre which some native ruffian had left, intending to split a serjeant's head. Other quarters in the cantonment were obliged to keep one ramosi, alias Paggi, a tracker, a temporarily reformed thief who keeps off other thieves; my bungalow required two. An ignoble position for a dominant race, this openly paying blackmail and compounding felony. The rule of the good Company was, however, not a rule of honour, but of expediency, and the safety of its officers was little regarded; they were stabbed in their tents, or cut down by dacoits, even when travelling on the highways of Gujarat. Long and loudly the survivors hoped that some fine day a bishop or a Director's son would come to grief, and when this happened at last the process was summarily stopped. Indeed, nothing was easier to find than a remedy. A heavy fine was imposed upon the district in which the outrage was committed. By such means, Mohammed Ali of Egypt made the Suez Desert safer than