which then envelops the flower is very large, and, when it bursts, makes an explosion like the report of a cannon." * Disgusted by the savage and suspicious temper of their king, many of the adigars remained sullenly aloof, while some assisted Major Hook, in order to co-operate with whom, seven other columns of troops, advancing from different parts of the coast, began to concentrate round Kandy. The entire strength was only 3,000 men; but this force was sufficient to make it appear that the sanguinary Raja Tri Wikrama Raja Singa had nothing to hope for now. On all sides he was hedged in by bayonets. By the 2nd of February the second brigade from Colombo was far up in the country, and had formed its camp on some important heights, where it was joined by General Brownrigg, who halted for some days to let the rest of the troops close up. There he received tidings that the king had quitted Kandy; then a general advance began, and on the 14th of February, Brownrigg took possession of the native capital, which was found quite deserted; but it soon became known that the fugitive king was concealed in a lonely house not far distant. On this, measures were at once taken to secure his person, and five days subsequently he was made prisoner, together with his aged mother, four wives, all his children, and some followers who adhered to his falling fortunes. He expected that he, and all with him, would be instantly butchered like the family and friends of Eheglapola, and when assured that their lives would all be spared, and their treatment would be good and tender, the bewildered savages became suddenly contented and were happy. In charge of Major Hook, the whole of the prisoners were, under a strong escort, conveyed down to Colombo; and so indifferent had the people become to the fate of their king, that not a shot was fired, nor a bow drawn in his defence. 543 until the 24th of January, 1816. He was heard more than once to assert, that until he was made prisoner by the British, he had lived in perpetual dread of assassination, so horrible had been his cruelties and excesses, which were said to be the result of fits of intemperance; and as a vast quantity of cherry-brandy bottles were found in the palace at Kandy, he is supposed to have been very fond of that liqueur. "Your British governors," said he to Major Hook, "have an advantage over us in Kandy; they have about them counsellors who never allow them to do anything in a passion, and that is the reason you have so few executions; but, unfortunately for us, the offender is dead before our resentment has subsided." † On the date above given, the ex-king, and 100 other persons, were conveyed as state prisoners to continental India, and after tarrying for a time at Madras, were placed in Vellore, where the former died in 1832. Two years after his incarceration there, a dangerous insurrection broke out in the central provinces of Ceylon, and lasted till the end of 1819, when, after several encounters in the woods, it was finally suppressed by the lieutenant-governor, General Brownrigg, who, for his eminent services there, had been created a baronet in March, 1816, when the king granted him an augmentation to his armorial bearings, representing in chief, the sword, sceptre, and crown of Kandy, with a demi-Kandyan as a crest. Since 1819, nearly uninterrupted peace has prevailed in Ceylon, and various improvements, fiscal, judicial, and commercial, have been fully carried out. The Kandyan provinces are separately administered by the governor, without the assistance of his council. There is no doubt that, of old, the possession of this fertile isle was turned to good account by the Portuguese and Dutch; although, until lately, writes a statistician in 1850, a vote of supply was annually made for the support of our Cingalese On the 6th of March he reached the European establishment. It is not in a commercial point of island capital, and instead of being placed in the view alone that we are to estimate the value of this fortress, which is insulated by the sea and a lake, conquest, which is one, says M. Bartolacci, that, he was, to his surprise, placed in a handsome and "in the event of a great reverse of fortune in India, well-furnished house, where he exclaimed: "As I would still afford us a most commanding position, am no longer permitted to be a king, I am thankful invulnerable by the Indian powers in the peninsula, for all this kindness." By this time our unequivocal and yet so situated as to give us the greatest facility right of conquest was admitted by all the adigars, for regaining the sovereignty of that country. . and on the 2nd of March the British flag was The harbour of Trincomalee is open to the largest hoisted over the palace at Kandy, and a salute of fleets in every season of the year, when the storms twenty-one guns announced that George III. was of the south-west and north-east monsoons render king of the island of Ceylon. impracticable, or very dangerous, the approach to His deposed predecessor remained at Colombo other ports in India. This circumstance alone • Thornberg. + Dr. Marshall's "Ceylon," &c. ought to fix our attention to that spot as peculiarly adapted to be made a strong military depôt and a place of great mercantile resort, if a generally free trade becomes effectually established from India to other parts of the world. It ought further to be observed, that the narrowness of the channel which separates the island from the continent of India, and position of Adam's Bridge, which checks the violence of the monsoons, leaves, on either side of it, a calm sea, and facilitates a passage to the opposite coast at all times of the year. A respectable European force stationed at Colombo, Jaffna patam, or Trincomalee, can, in a very few days or hours, be landed on the Malabar and Coromandel provinces." To the present day, the best account of the interior and of the people is that given by Captain Robert Knox, a merchant-mariner, who was taken prisoner on the coast, or kidnapped, and carried off by the king in 1659, and was there a captive for nineteen years. CHAPTER C. THE AFFAIRS OF CUTCH-QUARREL WITH THE AMEERS OF SCINDE-INSURRECTION AFFAIRS OF OUDE AND THE DECCAN-CASE OF PALMER AND CO. It was during the administration of the Marquis of Hastings that, as we have told, Java was so unwisely restored to the Dutch, thus giving them the keys of the Straits of Malacca and the Straits of Sunda. But now we shall proceed to record some miscellaneous occurrences, for which no exact place has hitherto occurred in our narrative; and the chief of these were, perhaps, the affairs of Cutch. The rajah of that country, Rao Barmaljee (or Bharmalji), after concluding a peaceful treaty with the British Government, had surrounded himself with reckless parasites and dissolute companions, among whom he gave loose to such intemperate habits as to impair his powers of reason; and his career now became that of a cruel and sanguinary tyrant. By his express orders Lakhpati, or Ladhuba, the young prince who had competed with him for the throne, was murdered with great barbarity; and his widow, who had been left pregnant, and afterwards bore a son, would have shared his fate but for British interference. Candid and friendly relations with a prince of a temper so brutal could not be of long duration; thus, he foolishly began to make open military preparations against us. Forewarned by these, the British sent an additional battalion to reinforce their troops in Anjar. On this, Barmaljee, fearing to attack them, turned his troops against Kallian Sing, the father of the prince's widow, and one of the Jhareja chiefs under British protection. As it was impossible to pass over such an infringement of the treaty as this, or to omit giving the rajah a rough lesson, our troops marched against him, and at their approach he made a hasty retreat. IN GOOJERAT Pushing on, the 24th of March, 1819, saw them in front of Bhooj, the capital of Cutch, having a fort on the bank of a small river. After repulsing some heavy bodies of horse and foot, which ventured to attack them, they carried the fort by storm; and Barmaljee, on discovering the futility of further resistance, surrendered to the mercy of the British commander. The latter, acting in concert with certain Jhareja chiefs, deposed him, and the administration of Cutch was to be carried on in the name of Desal Rao, his infant son, under the direction of a British Resident and the guarantee of the Government at Calcutta. These matters had scarcely been arranged when Cutch became the scene of one of the most dreadful earthquakes ever known in India. A vast tract of country sank down and was submerged by the invading sea, while, adjoined to it, an enormous mound of sand and earth, many miles in extent, was heaved up to a considerable height. In Bhooj, 7,000 houses were shaken to ruins, under which 1,140 persons were buried. At Anjar, 3,000 houses were destroyed, and the fort was shaken into a mere heap of stones. Many other places. suffered, and simultaneous shocks were felt in other parts of India. By the treaty concluded at Bhooj, the crime of female infanticide, which prevailed to a vast and horrible extent among the Jharejas, was to be suppressed; but now the political arrangement with Cutch gave great offence to the Ameers of Scinde, who had long had an eye to the conquest of it, and were inspired with rage and disappointment on finding themselves anticipated; and other 1819.] THE KHOSAS. 545 circumstances concurred to add to their antagonism apologies to Bombay and to Bhooj, and disowned to the British Government. The Khosas, and the proceedings of their troops. Indisposed to other predatory hordes who dwell on the skirts engage in a new war, which promised no useful of the desert of Scinde, had been pillaging on the result, the Marquis of Hastings accepted the borders of Cutch and Goojerat. To suppress these pretended explanation, and concluded with the robbers, the co-operation of the Ameers had been Ameers a treaty which stipulated that they should asked, and they had dispatched a body of their procure the liberation of all captives carried off by troops to act with a British detachment, which, the Khosas, and, moreover, should restrain the under the orders of Colonel Barclay, marched from latter, and all other marauders in their quarter, the northern frontier of Goojerat. The auxiliaries from raids into the territories of Britain and her from Scinde, instead of acting against the invading allies. Khosas, allowed them quietly to encamp in their neighbourhood, and when Barclay attacked and dispersed them, complained, oddly enough, that they themselves had been also the object of his attack. Another ground of offence was, that in pursuing the Khosas, Colonel Barclay had violated Scindian territory. In short, the Ameers were determined on having a quarrel, and without even asking for an explanation, or making the slightest effort to have an amicable settlement, they at once took the means for redress into their own hands, and, at the head of a body of troops, burst into Cutch, which they wasted with fire and sword to within fifty miles of Bhooj, and captured the town of Loona. Scinde is a province 300 miles long by eighty broad. Its government was a military despotism, under Ameers, who belonged to the Mohammedan sect of the Sheas. The inhabitants are also Mohammedan, and consist of forty-two tribes, which at that time could bring 36,000 horse into the field, all hardy and warlike men, who can also fight on foot. "The Scindians," says Mrs. Postans, "are a grave, sad people, and the sound of dancing, or the voice of music, is seldom heard among them. It would be strange, however, were it otherwise, where life is held as nought, when its loss may contribute to the rulers' pastime; when the ground, which should yield corn to the husbandman and fruit to the planter, is over-run with rank weeds and thorny bushes, to shelter wild and dangerous beasts; and when the villager tills the field with his sword by his side, and the grain-seller stands with his matchlock in his hand, in the market-place, to guard his property from robbery by the prince's followers." Such was the character of the people with whom we now seemed on the eve of a dangerous quarrel. After taking Loona, on the advance of our troops towards them, they fell back; but the Bombay Government declined to overlook the bold agression, and threatened to send a column of their army into Scinde; on this, the Ameers, who were not yet quite ready to do battle with Britain, sent Goojerat was the next source of trouble to the Governor-General. Anand Rao, its imbecile sovereign, held possession of the throne, while the government was nominally administered by his brother, Futteh Sing, under the surveillance of a British Resident. On the death of Futteh, in 1818, a younger brother, named Syajee Rao, nineteen years of age, took his place as a kind of regent, and matters continued thus till the following year, when Anand Rao died. On this occurring, Syajee became Guicowar. A youth somewhat fiery by nature, he was indisposed to forego any of his royal rights to Britain or any other power, and stated, with some truth, "That since he had been considered fit to conduct the government as regent to his predecessor, he must surely be capable of conducting it now that the sole right of sovereignty was legally vested in himself. There was no longer any occasion for the controlling presence of a British Resident." While it was impossible not to acknowledge the justice of what the young prince so plausibly advanced, it was easily foreseen at Calcutta how perilous to British interests and the prosperity of the country would be his uncontrolled exercise of royal and independent authority. Thus, the new Governor of Bombay, Mountstuart Elphinstone, deemed it necessary and proper to visit Baroda, for the purpose of adjusting the terms of future intercourse. The Guicowar had derived many advantages of great importance by the abolition of the Peishwa. By that event he had won much territory, and been released from heavy monetary demands; and as the British Government had undertaken the entire defence of his country, it was only deemed just that the insufficient quantity of territory ceded for subsidiary forces should be considerably increased. It was confidently supposed that the exchequer was in such a prosperous state as to be well able to bear the proposed additional tract; but much was Elphinstone's bewilderment to learn that it was in a state of extreme embarrassment. One million sterling of debt remained undis charged, while the expenditure of the last two years the war against the Pindarees and Mahrattas, the Wagars of Okamandal, a Goojerat district, about thirty miles in length by fifteen in breadth, surprised Dwarka, its principal town, and another named Beyt; and as there was no force to oppose them, made themselves masters of all the adjacent country. For several months they had been in undisputed possession, when the Hon. Colonel Leicester F. Stanhope, C.B., and QuartermasterGeneral in India, a son of the Earl of Harrington, BOMBAY BUNDER BOAT. also a distinguished officer, who had served at Buenos Ayres and throughout the Mahratta war, was sent against them by sea, at the head of an expedition, consisting of H.M. 65th Regiment, two regiments of native infantry, the 1st Light Cavalry, and a requisite train of guns. This force arrived off Dwarka, famous alike then as a nest of pirates and as a resort for pilgrims to the shrine of Krishna, and landed on the 26th of November, 1820. The garrison, consisting of Arabs and natives of Scinde, retired into the great temple, the shrine of which was a source of abundant wealth to the Brahmins, and the sulted before any expense of magnitude was in- solid walls of which seemed to mock all ordinary means curred." The sea-coast of Goojerat, from the Gulf of Cambay to the river Indus, is full of creeks and inlets; these are occupied by different independent chiefs, who were generally addicted to piracy, but are now kept in awe by British naval superiority; while the north, north-western, and even central quarters of the province, were until very late years unexplored, and were over-run or occupied by numerous hordes of armed banditti, who were thieves not so much by profession as by nation; and against these an expedition was undertaken in 1820. of attack. Over the roof of an adjoining house an entrance was effected by the bayonet, the 65th (or 2nd Yorkshire) leading the way, and of 500 armed men who garrisoned the place, and were driven out, only 100 escaped death. This punishment, by its extreme severity, so intimidated the rest, who, with their chiefs, were posted in a neighbouring thicket, that they surrendered at discretion. The robbers who garrisoned Beyt also surrendered, and thus the piratical insurrection in Goojerat was completely crushed. Between the Nabob of Oude, Sadut Ali, and Major Baillie, the Resident at his court during the Tempted by the withdrawal of our troops for time Lord Minto was in office, there had been 1814.] MAJOR BAILLIE. 547 fect truth he avoided personal intercourse with him, but allowed members of his staff to do so, and through them he was informed-at second-handthat the nabob was not treated by Major Baillie with the deference due to his royal rank. He therefore gave Baillie instructions to treat the nabob, "on all public occasions, as an independent prince; to be strict in the observance of all public ceremonials; and to confine advice or remonstrance upon any mismanagement in the nabob's adminis several discussions and disputes, which, after being | ventured to express on paper, to arrive at the perput an end to, began anew on the arrival of his successor. Their chief source of contention was, the amount of interference which the major was entitled to have in the internal government of Oude. The Earl of Minto had decided in favour of the Resident; but before any steps could be taken in accordance with that decision, he had sailed for Europe. The death of the nabob, on the 11th July, 1814, ended their jealousies. Throughout his life he had been avaricious, and now his treasure almost amounted to thirteen millions sterling. Ghazee-ud-Deen Hyder, his eldest son, succeeded him; and that prince, being aware that he was greatly indebted to Major Baillie for the ease with which he did so, was facile enough to consult him in the choice of his dewan and other ministers, and to agree to much of the internal reformation which that officer had urged in vain upon his father. But all this was too pleasant a state of matters to be of long continuance. Some of the reforms, made at the suggestion of the major, were opposed to native prejudice, and the nabob began to repent that, like his father, he had NAUTCH-GIRL OF BARODA. tration to such occasions as might endanger British interests." had not been long issued when the major was desired to obtain another million sterling from the nabob, as a supply in season for the war in Nepaul. He gave the money, but with unconcealed constraint and annoyance; and he felt more than ever irritated at Baillie, as being the medium or instrument through whom it was exacted. He became more than ever hostile to the Resident, turned a deaf ear to his suggestions, and removed from his court and councils all persons who favoured him. Aware of all this, and somewhat irritated by not taken his own way; and, while full of this con- | the course the Governor-General had pursued, the viction, he paid a visit to the Governor-General, major forwarded to him a letter, in which he gave then Earl of Moira, who had come to Cawnpore during our war with Nepaul, and on that occasion Ghazee-ud-Deen offered a million sterling as a free gift to the Company. Moira declined it as a gift, but accepted it as a loan, to bear interest at the government rate of six per cent. That all this was meant as a bribe was evident; for at the time the nabob made his handsome offer, he delivered to the earl a document, which, though expressing the greatest personal regard for Major Baillie, hinted pretty plainly at a desire to be less controlled by him. Having, by some means, discovered that the sentiments of the young nabob in this matter were much stronger than he had free utterance to all he felt on the subject. A rupture was the consequence; Major Baillie was removed, and the nabob was left uncontrolled in the internal administration of Oude. In May, 1816, the loan of the second million was discharged by a treaty, which commuted it for a piece of territory which belonged to Britain, but was situated to the north-west of Oude, on the Nepaulese frontier; and now, encouraged by the apparent cordiality subsisting between the two governments, the Earl of Moira ventured to recommend a change of title, which would give Oude more the character of an independent kingdom. The nabobs of that country (properly called |