In the second belt of country, ranging from forty to eighty or a hundred miles from the hills, is the struggle betwixt the sturdy soil and sturdier cultivator. In vain saltpetre crops out of the uninviting surface and renders brackish all the wells; in vain rich crops of reeds, wild grass, or stunted copse encumber the surface, as the spontaneous gifts of the earth. The husbandman wages unequal and yet not unsuccessful war with decreasing fertility. What science might do has never been tried, but the man and his stock and his miserable implements do wonders. All the weary

watches of the night the oxen revolve round the well; all the weary day the surface is scratched with plough, stamped by cattle, sparsely manured, and miserably weeded; and yet, year after year, comes the glad harvest; population increases, and grain is so cheap that the complaint is of abundance, not of scarcity. With the canal new regions come under the plough, and new villages spring into existence.

Not ungrateful is life in scenes such as these amidst a manly and contented population. For eight months in the year the tent is the proper home of the English civil official, who loves his duties and his people. Thus he comes to know and be known of them; thus personal influence and local knowledge give him a power not to be won by bribes or upheld by bayonets. The notables of the neighbourhood meet their friend and ruler on his morning march; greybeards throng round his unguarded door with presents of the best fruits of the land, or a little sugar, spices, and almonds, according to the fashion of their country, and are never so happy, as when allowed to seat themselves on the carpet and talk over old times and new events, the promise of the harvest, and the last orders of the rulers. From his fort comes down, with diminished state, the representative of the old feudatories, who are now gradually being absorbed. He no doubt regrets the time, when murders and plunder were more fashionable, and feels himself out of place in the new order of things; and in a few more years his race will have passed away, like that of the wolves and the tigers. Often the morning march is varied by the crossing of some stream, or the wading of a sudden torrent, or by some adventure by flood and field. Storms occasionally beat round the canvas home at night; black care, tied up in the postman's wallet behind the horseman, finds him out daily, however obscure and distant from the hum of cities may be his retreat. Still, in spite of the hard riding at sunrise and sunset, and the hard work during the brief winter days, happy and peaceful are the hours spent in camp, too often alone, in the north of India, and sadly and fondly to be looked back upon.

But to the south extends another and stranger belt of country, the great solitary desert jungle, which occupies the vast spaces be

of a lofty tower, and, spreading out his hands, announces, that this sombre forest extends unbroken and unvaried above one hundred and fifty miles to Multán. We look over a sea of jungle and grass tufts, with grass enough to feed all the cattle in the world: we wonder what object the Creator had in view, when He left such vast expanses of trees which bear no fruit, and are so beautiful in outline. Far off we can trace the silvery line of the rivers, fringed with trees and cultivation. Here there is no human habitation; no animal save the fox, the deer, or the partridge shares the empire with countless herds of cattle, sheep, and camels; here the camel seems to be at home, and we catch glimpses of him enjoying himself in a way, which he certainly does not do elsewhere. Broad roads traverse the waste, and at stated intervals are the serais, the wells, the storehouses, the trough for cattle, and the police station. Along this road in 1858 plied conveyances peculiar to the country, and the incipient civilisation, and long trains of camels, laden with military stores from England, and merchandise; relieved at stages of forty miles, the bullock train used to creep at the rate of one mile to the hour, whether laden with packages or six soldiers crushed into a cart, and rolling and jolting all the weary day and weary night, except where the halt was sounded at fixed stages for refreshment. Still more eligible, more fast, and more dangerous as a conveyance was the truck, drawn by two horses, dashing along, when once the horses started, abandoning the road, or pretence of road, and taking the easiest course among the brushwood. On the truck was fastened a litter with canvas sides, and in the litter were stowed away ladies, and children, and invalids, who, if they had good nerves and good luck, arrived safe at their destination. But for speed, for delight, and for danger in this wild track, try a seat by the driver in the mail-cart; strong, springy, high-wheeled, sufficiently weighted with official correspondence and overland letters. This vehicle was dragged by two horses, one being fastened outside the shafts, after the manner of the Grecian chariot or the outrigger in the Russian sledge. Away! away! hold hard by the iron bar, and gird your loins tight, and you will enjoy all the pleasure of being run away with, without being deprived of the danger, ten miles an hour skimming along the roads with heavenward jolts, in spite of the straw which is liberally strewed over the ruts. You heard peculiar phraseology and had strange companions, and learned for the first time, that a Hindu would not blow a Mahometan bugle. But stranger still were the horses: will they start, or will they not? that is the question. Over and over again came the same dumb show, the same proportion of deceit, the same amount of force applied to get these strange beasts into motion. The coaxing is tried first-"Mera jan," "My

line verged into the authoritative, and at last, when Jehu's patience was exhausted, a boundless flow of Panjab stable-abuse was poured out, frightful to hear, and comprehending in one condemnation the recusant nag's ancestors in the remotest degree, and all his female relations. It was an interesting study of very indifferent horseflesh. Their tempers were born with them; for some went off like lambs, some stood out for a few minutes, as a point of honour; some spun round with the cart; in vain the wheels were moved behind, and their forelegs pulled onwards with ropes; in vain they were patted, kicked, and stabbed; but they generally went at last, and we suppose they died at last; but though we often, along the road, met the dead body of a camel (for that is their proper burialground), we never remember coming on a dead mail-cart horse. With the railway all these local features have departed, and are alluded to as traditions of a past epoch.

Sometimes the ruins are passed by of an ancient city: streets and houses still to be traced, destroyed on some former invasion or period of destruction, which recurred so frequently in India. The wretched huts of the modern village have been built from the vast debris, and are huddled round the protecting tower, or have shrunk into the old serai, with the gates closed at night, for there are strange necessities and strange people in these wastes. Bitter are the waters that have to be drunk. Or, during the night, the traveller came suddenly on the line of march of a European regiment, the advance guard of camels, and suttlers, and baggage cattle, and an army of servants. At length was heard the heavy tramp, and distinguished the dark column, the occasional glistening of a bayonet in the torchlight, and the officers at the head, while the mail-cart drew aside to let pass in a cloud of dust those thirsty, footsore Britons. And nowhere down the line did the faithful milestone desert the traveller, and the still more faithful telegraph pole, which raised its head as a protest against the absence of civilisation; and the driver used to point out wonderingly two furrows turned up, the one the stamp of the iron horse, and the other the line of the canal, and in a few years both canal and rail ran side by side through this waste. A slight geological subsidence of a few feet would change all into fertility, and even now, as a branch of the river is neared, a bright oasis gleams out, and the grateful sound of the revolving wheel tells of the earth being forced by sturdy man to yield its abundance.

Such are the tracts, of which we try to offer a faint description. They should be seen in their fertility and in their barren solitude to be appreciated. And so situated are they on the threshold of India, so narrow is the space betwixt mountain and desert, that all the invaders of India must have thronged through it. The darkness of night has closed over the period, when the Arian races

threaded the defiles of Afghanistan, they must have lifted their eyes to the mountains, and perhaps thought with regret of their native snows; they must have crossed by raft, or skin, or by ford, one and all of the great five rivers, contending at each stage with the rude aborigines. Thus came the Brahmans, the Kathæi or Khatri, the Geta or Jats, bringing with them their old traditions, language, and nature-worship. There were brave men no doubt before Alexander the Great, but we know nothing about them, so they may as well not have existed; but when Alexander raised the curtain, he found in these regions a highly civilised people. He came, he saw, and he conquered; but somewhere on the east of the river Hyphasis he paused, and there must have been erected the pillars with the original of the famous inscription,

"EGO ALEXANDER HUC PERVENI."

When centuries had effaced the memory of the visit of the strange Western conqueror, there came a new invader. Great events had taken place in that thousand years. Rome had risen and fallen; the religion of Christ had been superseded in the East by the creed of Mahomet; and the time had come, when India was to be introduced into the comity of nations. Far up in the interior of the Celestial empire, in those tracts where the great rivers leave the mountains, there are tablelands with cities, populations, languages, customs, and religions, of which we still know little; but from the day, that the first lances of Mahmud gleamed in the passes of Peshawur, we have had a flood of light thrown upon the country betwixt the rivers Chenáb and Beas, and Lahore became the capital of Northern India. Dynasty after dynasty ruled there, and new settlers appropriated the soil. We know nothing of the process, under which land changed hands; the cry of the despoiled never reaches us. We know nothing of the cause by which the new faith was propagated, how in each village younger sons, or unsuccessful litigants, were tempted to abandon the faith of their ancestors and for love of money adopt the new idea. The bitter feelings, the domestic feuds, which accompanied these events, have been forgotten; but the fact remains, and Hindu and Mahometan share together their inheritance without grudge, a standing comment on the absurdity of a Christian Government permitting even for a day the existence of the old disinheriting Brahmanical laws. Cities and towns were built, their names were changed, and, when the time came, they dwindled away, and their materials were made use of to build other towns; the Mahometans pulled down temples and built mosques, and with retributive justice at a later period the Hindus pulled down

garden and the proud tomb sprung up, hereafter to be converted to strange uses, as forts, zanánas, and English churches, but the memory of the builder was soon forgotten. Nothing is permanent in the East. Still the country flourished, poured forth its annual tributes of the kindly gifts of the earth, was ever the prey of the strongest, for the fatal gift of her beauty rendered her ever desirable, and her physical position rendered her always defenceless, ever at the mercy of her powerful neighbours at Kábul and Delhi; ever oscillating on the seesaw of alternate dominion towards the north-west and south-east, occupying the same position as Palestine betwixt Egypt and Assyria, and Lombardy betwixt Austria and France. Let politicians say what they like, let them talk of the blessings of national independence, and descant on the miseries of a foreign, and therefore a bad, Government, and the advantages of a good one: these things are not felt so keenly or appreciated so fully by the people in their villages, as the little tyrannies of the petty landowner, and the goodnatured fatherly kindness of the local Government. Lahore may have been, and has been, for centuries the centre of intrigue: heads may have fallen like poppies; houses may have been plundered, and females, decked yesterday in silks and jewels, the plunder of provinces, may have been turned out in rags; but far away-far away in the peaceful valleys, the long Indian day has worn itself out quietly and happily to the unconscious peasant, with no thought beyond his petty cares and vulgar joys. So long as his local ruler dwelling in the neighbouring castle, so long as the moneylender of the adjoining market, were not unusually disagreeable, what mattered it to him, the hewer of wood and drawer of water, who rose and who fell at Delhi or Kábul? The blast of the triumphant trumpet, the echo of the funeral wail, reached him not. The cattle came home lowing from the pasture-ground, as the shades of evening fell; without fail his meal was prepared; the revolving month brought round to him in due succession the annual festivals and the half-yearly harvests, glad season of rejoicing, for which he did not forget to trim a lamp on the steps of the old temple, and to worship with offerings of butter the Lares and Penates, as his fathers had done before him. His children grew up strong and hale; some took service, and fell in some famous victory, but the old man neither knew, why it was fought, or what good came of it to the country; his only marks of time were some wedding or some birth, the only reminders of age were the grey hairs in his beard. As his physical strength failed him, he abandoned the duties of the field and the forest to younger hands without repining; he had fed his whelps when he was strong, and they must feed him He settled down in the corner of the hut, and looked calmly forward to the time, when he would be reduced to ashes on the

now.