torian entreaty for backsheesh. The pigeons, alarmed at the reverberation, started off from the rock, darkening the air in their flight.

I don't know what becomes of the pigeons; evidently no one kills and eats them. In the peepul tree, under which a betel-nut man was getting shaved, there were trays suspended from the boughs on which passers-by threw a few grains of rice or millet. The tree was peopled with birds, which, when not overeating themselves, hopped about as if the place belonged to them; which indeed it does, for no Hindoo would disturb them.

All the life of an Indian bazaar dies out at sundown, as it begins at sunrise. There are no flaring gaslights, no crowd of promenaders. As darkness falls over the narrow streets the goods are taken in from the ever-open shop. The shopkeepers disappear, the shops become dark, empty caverns, and only here and there the glare of a miniature furnace with a man's face suddenly lighted up as he applies the blow-pipe, shows the late worker in silver or brass.

CHAPTER XXII.

SOMETHING NEW ABOUT INDIA.

I WENT to India with the depressed feeling born of listening to innumerable debates on the subject in the House of Commons. From these I gathered that India is a hopeless incubus upon the Empire, a source of constant and increasing danger, which might any day, even to-morrow, reach its crisis. That India should "perish," or that in some other quite conclusive way England should be rid of a legacy originally created by traders and fostered by military adventurers, seemed to be the best thing that could happen for this country. I left India full of amazement at the fertility of her resources, the steady growth of her prosperity, the docility and industry of her people, and full of hope for her future.

India is still one of the richest countries in the world, though in a different way from what it was when Clive extorted over two

millions and a half in jewels, plate, and specie as a fine for the revolt of Bengal. The jewels and precious stones are exhausted, and Golconda has become but a name. But, fostered and encouraged by wise and watchful government, the manifold natural gifts of India are being cultivated till its trade has reached colossal proportions, which increase with every year. Fifty years ago, after a quarter of a century of British rule, India exported goods of the value of ten millions, showing the country tenfold richer than it was before English influence prevailed. In 1880 India exported sixty-six millions worth of its natural products, making with its imports a total turnover of one hundred and twenty-two millions within twelve months. Not the least hopeful sign in the aspect of Indian trade is its adaptability and its readiness to take advantage of all the adverse circumstances of foreign nations.

Other people's adversity has ever been India's opportunity. The civil war in America gave an impetus to its cotton industry which has proved permanent. The failure of crops in the United States suggested to India that it might become the great wheat-growing country of the world, an expectation by no means beyond reasonable hope of fulfilment.

Ten years ago India exported one million hundredweight of wheat. Three years later the exports reached over six millions hundredweight, valued at three millions sterling. The Crimean war, shutting out Russian flax and hemp from Dundee, brought jute into use, and India is now richer by a steady and increasing income and nearly four millions sterling a year. There is scarcely any great article of international trade which India does not produce and deal in in increasing quantities. Cotton, jute, and wheat have been alluded to; but India exports rice, oilseeds to the extent of six millions sterling per annum, indigo, opium, tobacco, coffee, cinchona (an industry of recent years), and tea, the trade in which has multiplied fourfold in ten years and is still increasing. Its carpets and rugs are familiar to every English household. Its pottery, as exemplified in the Bombay School of Art, requires only to be better known to become a fashionable craze, profitable for India and wholesome for English taste. In addition to these exports, India has coal, not very good it is true; iron, of the best quality in the world; copper, some lead, much tin, petroleum, and a fathomless stock of saltpetre, with which it supplies the world's need of gunpowder.

With a country thus exceptionally rich

in natural products, it will reasonably be asked why we hear so much of the poverty of the people and of the difficulty the administration find in making both ends meet. One reason for this is that for the last quarter of a century India has been plagued with famine and war. The mutiny of '57, the great famines of 1874 and 1876-78, and the last attempt to create a scientific frontier on the north, whilst they account for the unflourishing state of the Indian Exchequer, really supply the best proofs of the natural wealth of the country and the elasticity of its revenues. There are few other countries in the world that could have survived those successive blows, whereas India to-day is more prosperous, with fairer prospects, than at any previous period of her history.

Relief from war or, what is scarcely less fatal to the prosperity of a country, deliverance from the daily apprehensions born of a restless policy, has come only within the last four years, and the taxpayers of the country are still handicapped by the weight of expenditure incurred in the Afghan war. But recovery is almost complete, and it is expected. that the year's Budget of 1884 will show a fair surplus. As to the recurrence of famine, the foundations of its empire are being sapped