8

which the countess, by a refinement of cruelty, was | civilization, which bid fair to be crowned with success. compelled to witness the dreadful scene, is still called According to the barbarous policy of former times, the "the Countess's Room." The unhappy lady was gipsies were allowed to remain, from generation to confined for the rest of her life in a tower at the generation, ignorant, demoralized, and degraded, withvillage of Maybole. During her imprisonment she out the slightest attempt being made to instruct or to is said to have completely covered the walls of the reclaim them, although their crimes were all the while mansion with tapestry. One of her daughters was punished with unrelenting severity. Within these afterwards married to the celebrated Bishop Burnet, few years, however, under the influence of a wiser and but the family has been continued by the progeny of more benevolent feeling, a different mode of dealing the earl's second wife. According to another version with them has been adopted. The practicability of reof the story, the hero of this adventure was not claiming this hapless race has been fully demonstrated. Johnnie Faa, who was king of the gipsies about the The Rev. John Baird, minister of Yetholm, has long year 1590, but a Sir John Faa of Dunbar, to whom exerted himself in the most praiseworthy manner to the lady was previously engaged, when her affections improve the character and condition of his lawless were shamefully violated by her forced marriage with parishioners, and he is now assisted in his benevolent the Earl of Cassilis. All are agreed, however, that labours by a society, which was formed for that purpose the hapless lover, whether gallant knight or gipsy a few years ago, in Edinburgh. The plan followed is chief, was accompanied by a band of these desperate simply to keep the children at home during the outcasts, and that the whole band perished excepting excursions of their parents (who are absent usually about ten months out of the twelve), to give them a useful education, and afterwards to find situations for them as servants or apprentices. In this they have to some extent succeeded. They have now about forty children regularly at school, of whose conduct and progress the teacher reports favourably, and about thirty adults have been withdrawn from the vagabond life of their tribe, and are now in the fair way of becoming useful members of society. The reformation of a race so long beyond the pale of civilization must necessarily be a work of time, but the practicability of reclaiming them to the usages of civilized life has been demonstrated, and we trust the meritorious effort will not be relaxed till the gipsies have been elevated to their proper place among the ordinary population of the country.

one,

-the meanest of them all, Who lived to weep and sing their fall

in the following strains:

The gypsies came to our gude lord's yett,
And O, but they sang sweetly;
They sang sae sweet, and sae very complete,
That down came our fair lady.

And she came tripping down the stair,
And all her maids before her;

As soon as they saw her weel fa'ured face
They cuist the glamourye1 ower her.

"O come with me," says Johnnie Faa,
"O come with me, my dearie :
For I vow and swear by the hilt of my sword
That your lord shall nae mair come near ye."

Then she gied them the gude wheat bread,
And they ga'e her the ginger;
But she gied them a far better thing,
The gowd ring aff her finger.

"Gae tak frae me this gay mantle,
And bring to me a plaidie,

For if kith and kin and a' had sworn
I'd follow the gipsy laddie."

*

And when our lord came hame at e'en,
And speir'd for his fair lady,
The tane she cried, and the other replied,
"She's away wi' the gipsy laddie."
"Gae saddle to me the black black steed,
Gae saddle and make him ready,
Before that I either eat or sleep
I'll gae seek my fair lady."

And we were fifteen weel-made men,
Although we were na bonnie,
And we were a' put down for ane,
A fair young wanton lady.

In concluding our sketch of this vagrant race, it is gratifying to be enabled to state that efforts have at length been made, with a view to their instruction and

(1) A species of magical illusion, which the gipsies were formerly believed to exercise.

MAJOR EDWARDES ON THE PUNJAB.2

MAJOR EDWARDES is already known to the English
public as a valiant and facetious gentleman. A book
of his writing will, therefore, be expected to be a
graphic and sensible performance. Carlyle's theory,
that a man who can fight well will also write well,
appears to have reason in it, and is not indifferently
illustrated in the present volumes. This "Year on
the Punjab Frontier," contains a good deal of interest-
ing information, intermingled with much lively de-
scription, entertaining anecdotes, sketches of notable
individuals, incidents by flood and fire, hairbreadth
'scapes, and perilous adventures. To write what is
called a
"review" of it is nowise our present business
or intention, inasmuch as we are persuaded that
readers will prefer to see something of the work itself;
portions of which we shall accordingly proceed to
select for their edification and amusement, troubling
them meanwhile with as little commentary as possible.

By way of beginning, it may not be amiss to set forth the author's reasons for publishing the work. In

(2) " A Year on the Punjab Frontier, in 1848-9." By Major Herbert B. Edwardes, C.B., H.E.I.C.S. 2 vols. London: Bentley.

spared from the duties on which he was engaged, I
was ultimately chosen to take his place in the Bunnoo
expedition; an accident to which I am indebted for
many opportunities and honours which would have
fallen far more happily on my friend." This was in
the middle of February, 1847. The object of the
expedition was to induce the Bunnoochees to pay
revenue. The Major says he had hardly a month
allowed him to talk over an independent people, who
had resisted the Sikh supremacy for a quarter of a
century; and he thinks it is not very surprising that
he signally failed in the attempt.
He says:-

and

a straightforward and unpretending preface, he says- tion of Lahore by the British troops, and the appoint. The book is simply what it professes to be the ment of a " British resident, having authority in the record of a busy year, on an important frontier, in a Sikh councils," which the author deems needful to a country, and at a crisis, which have excited the right understanding of the work. From this we learn national attention of Englishmen. In writing it I have that the "British Resident," appointed by Lord three objects in view; and I will put the most selfish Hardinge, to "control and guide" the Sikh chiefs, first, to save any one else the trouble. 1. It is to put after the establishment of a "Council of Regency," on record a victory which I myself remember with was Sir Henry Lawrence; and that one of the first more satisfaction than any I helped to gain before affairs to which his attention was called, in his capa Mooltan-the bloodless conquest of the wild valley of city of President of the Council, was the "Revenue Bunnoo. It was gained neither by shot nor shell, but of Bunnoo." The British officer whom the Resident simply by balancing two races and two creeds. For had intended to associate with the Sikh commander fear of a Sikh army, two warlike and independent as colleague and adviser, was Lieutenant Nicholson; Muhommudan tribes levelled to the ground, at my" but," says Major Edwardes, “as he could not be bidding, the four hundred forts which constituted the strength of their country; and for fear of those same Muhommudan tribes, the same Sikh army, at my bidding, constructed a fortress for the Crown, which completed the subjugation of the valley. . . . 2. A second object is, to give my countrymen at home an insight into the actual life and labours of an Indian political officer. An indistinct notion prevails that ' a political' is a sort of person attached to Indian armies, to embarrass all military operations, and do his utmost to bring disgrace upon the British arms. Amongst other duties, political officers are generally attached to military expeditions; to interpret the political views of Government in sending them; to be the medium of all negotiations; and to assist the General with their local knowledge, and local influence. In a country so totally strange as India to the soldiers of her Majesty's army, and so very partially known as it can ever be, even to those of the Honourable Company's service, the practice is not only advantageous, but necessary. 3. Lastly, I have been actuated by a desire to contribute my mite of local knowledge to the world's common stock. . . In the present work, I subscribe something towards a knowledge of the countries trans-Indus. If it is not all that could be wished, an indulgent reader will remember, that it was acquired in little more than 'a year on the Punjab frontier;' and that not a year of dilettante travelling, going where I listed to seek, and lingering where I found pleasant spots, with a mind at ease, time at command, and nothing to do but fill note-books with reflections; but a year of intense labour in great public duties, with never any certainty of life for four-and-twenty hours. Yet I find that what I collected in a year, I have been six months reducing into form-months I could ill spare from one year's rest... Within a few weeks of the publication of this book, I shall be again on my way to the Punjab frontier;' but I cannot bid adieu to England without telling all in it, nobles and commons, gentle and simple, how gratefully I have felt, how long I shall remember, how earnestly I will endeavour to deserve, the great kindness they have shown me. May the past and present alike strengthen me for the future."

We entered Bunnoo on the 15th of March, and were burnt out of it by the sun on the 1st of May. Of a lakh and three-quarters of rupees of revenue, due from the valley, we had collected only half a lakh ; as to a peaceable settlement for the future (that is to say, an engagement on the part of the people to pay anything annually of their own free will), we had fully ascertained that it was hopeless." It was not until a second visit that the author accomplished the objects mentioned in the preface.

He does not consider, however, that the expedition was quite fruitless, but that certain ends were gained by it which could not have been so readily gained otherwise. We must not stay with him to enter into particulars concerning his proceedings, but, skipping a great deal of descriptive and other matter, cast about for something which may be read with interest in a detached shape. The following, at page 71 of the first volume, seems not inapplicable, and will introduce us to a strange state of society :

"The Bunnoochees do not constitute the entire population of Bunnoo, and the reader would have a very imperfect idea of its people and social state; if I omitted to mention three classes of men whose influence materially affects the valley. These are the Oolumá, or religious characters; the Hindoos, and the Vizeeree interlopers.

"A well educated man will, in all probability, be religious; but an ignorant one is certain to be superstitious. A more utterly ignorant and superstitious people than the Bunnoochees I never saw. The vilest jargon was to them pure Arabic from the blessed Koran, the clumsiest imposture a miracle, and the fattest fakeer a saint. The myriads of holy vagabonds, who are the spawn of the prophet, found in the Bunnoo.

The Hindoos are the Jews of Cabul and the Punjab regions; the brokers and money-changers who make themselves generally useful to such of the inhabitants as have landed and cash affairs to manage; and with a Jew's sagacity they usually contrive to turn most of the concerns committed to them, to a private and personal advantage. In Bunnoo, however, they appear to be peculiarly degraded, and are subjected to many restrictions and spoliations. A few of the Major's sentences about them may be here inserted :

chees an easy prey, and in their fertile fields a luxurious | good Muliommudans. He lent his money to the dislivelihood. Where the carcass is, there are the tressed Bunnoochee, and took some land in mortgage eagles gathered together.' Far and near from the until the debt was paid. Whatever burdens that ungrateful hills around, the Moollah and the Kâzee, land was liable to in the community, whether tithe to the Peer and the Syud, descended to the smiling vale the Mullick, or black mail to the Sikh, were defrayed armed in a panoply of spectacles and owl-like looks, by the unhappy landlord, while his holy creditor enmiraculous rosaries, infallible amulets, and tables of joyed the crops." descent from Muhommud. Each new comer, like St. Peter, held the keys of heaven; and the whole, like Irish beggars, were equally prepared to bless or curse to all eternity him who gave or who withheld. These were air-drawn daggers,' against which the Bunnoochee peasant had no defence. For him the whistle of the far-thrown bullet, or the nearer sheen of his enemy's shumsheer' had no terrors; blood was simply a red fluid; and to remove a neighbour's head at the shoulder, as easy as cutting cucumbers. But to be cursed in Arabic, or anything that sounded like it; to be told that the blessed prophet had put a black mark against his soul, for not giving his best field to one of the Prophet's own posterity; to have the saliva of a disappointed saint left in anger on his door-post; or behold a Hâjee, who had gone three times to Mecca, deliberately sit down and enchant his camels with the itch, and his sheep with the rot; these were things which made the dagger drop out of the hand of the awe-stricken savage, his knees to knock together, his liver to turn to water, and his parched tongue to be scarce able to articulate a full and complete concession of the blasphemous demand. Even the weak kings of Cabul availed themselves of these fears, and long after they had ceased to draw secular revenue from Bunnoo, found no difficulty in quartering on any of the tuppels the superfluous saints of Cabul.

"Once when I was encamped in the Sooraunee tuppehs, two half-buried human bodies were discovered, whose wounds bore evidence to the violence of their death. I was afraid they were some of my own men, and instant inquiry was made in camp; when some Bunnoochees came forward to explain that they were only two Hindoos, who had gone out without a guard to collect some debts!' No Hindoo in Bunnoo was permitted to wear a turban, that being too sacred a symbol of Muhommudanism; and a small cotton skullcap was all that they had to protect their brains from the keen Bunnoo sun. When they came into our camp they made a holiday of it, brought a turban in their pockets, and put it on with childish delight when they got inside the lines. If any Hindoo wished to celebrate a marriage in his family, he went to his Mullick for a licence as regularly as an English gentleman to Doctors' Commons, and had to hire the Mullick's soldiers also to guard the procession, and fire a feu de joie. Notwithstanding all these outward dangers and disabilities, the Hindoo in his inmost

It is no wonder, therefore, that when I came to register the lands, I found one-sixth of Bunnoo in the grasp of the Oolumá. Out of 278 forts registered in the richest parts of the valley, no less than 44 were, in the spring of 1848, the immediate property of re-soul might hold high carnival,' for assuredly he was ligious characters. Indirectly, their possessions were far wider. Exempted from all tribute themselves, (for neither did the lay Mullick ever dare to take tithe for himself from the Oolumá, nor assess them for the Sikh invader,) these privileged classes soon grew rich, and began to put their savings out to usury. The Bunnoochee landowners, notwithstanding the natural fertility of their country, were poor. Every two or three years the Sikh army harried their fields, trod down their harvests, burnt their houses, and inflicted injuries which it took the intervals of peace to repair; and in these intervals the Bunnoochee Mullick, too ignorant to estimate his own tithes, farmed them to a sharp Hindoo trader, and spent the produce in debauchery, indifferent if the Hindoo who had paid him fifty per cent., exacted two hundred per cent. from the people. To meet all these demands, the landowner was too often obliged to borrow; and his neighbour, the Syud, so illiterate, that he could not read the Koran of his great ancestor, could at least plead utter ignorance that the sacred volume prohibits usury to

the moral victor over his Muhommudan masters. I do not remember a single chief in Bunnoo who could either read or write, and, what is much rarer among natives, very few indeed could make a mental calrulation. Every chief, therefore, kept Hindoos about his person as general agents and secretaries. Bred up to love money from his cradle, the common Hindoo cuts his first tooth on a rupee, wears a gold mohur round his neck for an amulet, and has cowry shells (the lowest denomination of his god) given him to play with on the floor. The multiplication-table, up to one hundred times one hundred, is his first lesson; and out of school he has two pice (half-pence) given to him to take to the bazaar and turn into an anna before he gets his dinner; thus educated, Hindoos, of all others, are the best adapted for middle-men, and the Bunnoochee Mullick found in them a useful but double-edged tool. They calculated the tithes due to him from the tuppeh, and told him a false total much under the real one; they then offered to buy them from him and cheated. him dreadfully; and lastly, they collected the tithes

from the people who were equally ignorant, and took | could interfere, that I wonder he survived a minute.

He only lingered, however, till night, in spite of the remedies which the native doctor, by my orders, applied to him. The rage of the soldiery was beyond description, and I had great difficulty in preventing his being carried off to be burnt alive. Even late in the evening a deputation came to say that it was apparent the Ghazee could not live out the night, and had he not better be hanged at once, while he had any life in him ?' I said, 'No; let him die; the example will be just as great, perhaps greater, if his body is exposed on the gallows afterwards.'

My tent, immediately after this startling occur

one hundred for fifty, backed by the soldiers of the very Mullick to whom they had given fifty for one hundred. If the landowner was distressed, the Hindoo competed with the Muhommudan priest for the honour of relieving him with a loan upon his land; and if the debt was afterwards repudiated, he easily obtained justice by bribing his friend the Mullick." Concerning the "Vizeeree interlopers," and how they became established in Bunnoo, we shall be able to quote nothing, though they are rather an interesting people. Neither can we follow the Major in his account of his manifold and active efforts to organize the different interests of the population, and to esta-rence, was besieged by the officers and soldiers, some blish peaceful arrangements in the territory which he half naked, just as they had rushed from the fort had to govern. That he had no easy work of it, an works when they heard my pistol, and it was really ‘exciting incident," which shall be given next, will quite sufficient compensation for the danger, to see tend to show:the unfeigned anxiety of the men, and hear their loud greetings and congratulations. All discipline was lost in such a moment of strong feeling. Thirty swords at least, covered with blood, were held out among the crowd, and as many voices shouted, 'I hit the dog this way!' 'I cut him that! And certainly they had not left much of him untouched, though they had been too much in each other's way to deal very fatal blows. Then came all the officers and sirdars of the force, throwing down nuzzurs and whirling money round my head, as is their custom on occasions of triumph or deliverance, and the sun set before I could get rid of the assembly. The worst part of the whole business is, that the Ghazee slashed one of my syces (grooms) most severely before he entered my tent, and I am afraid he is anything but out of danger. The poor fellow was cooking his dinner, and the cowardly rascal sliced him with his tulwár all down the back."

"After transacting cutcherry (office) business for an hour or two, I was sitting with Swahn Khan, Vizeeree, and his interpreter, talking over Bunnoo affairs, when the cry arose that 'Swords were going!' Swahn Khan having no arms (according to camp rules), bolted out of the tent; while his 'man Friday' began dancing about, wringing his hands, and ejaculating 'Oh! that I had now a sword! This is the evil of taking away men's proper tools!' Having, ever since the first attempt of this kind, kept a double-barrelled pistol on my table, I now cocked both barrels, and walked outside, for the row had grown quite deafening, and I thought there must be a dozen Ghazecs at least; in which case one person inside a tent fourteen feet square would stand but a poor chance. Scarcely had I got out at one door, than the Ghazee1 (for there proved to be only one) forced his way through the sentries and chuprassees (official messengers), and entered my tent at the other door. Hearing the rush, I turned round, and could see through the screens of the tent a Bunnoochee, with a naked sword, plunging after me like a mad bull. (The outside door of an Indian tent turns up, and is supported on props during the day, as a kind of porch, to keep off the sun. It is very low, and I knew that the Ghazee must stoop as he came out, so here I took my stand.) His turban was knocked off in stooping at the door, and when he stood up outside, he glared round for his victim like a tiger who had missed his spring. Then his eyes met mine; and seeing no resource, I fired one barrel into his breast. The shock nearly knocked him down, for there could not have been two feet between us. He staggered, but did not fall; and I was just thinking of firing the other barrel at his head, when a stream of soldiers and camp-followers, with all kinds of weapons, rushed in and bore away the wretch some twenty yards towards a native's tent, into which, hacked and chopped in every direction, he contrived to crawl; but was followed up, and was so mangled by the indignant crowd before my people

(1) A Ghazee is a sort of Muhommudan Crusader-one who "devotes his life to fighting for the faith, and spilling the blood of infidels."-Vol. i. p. 156.

We are treating the Major's book as a sort of quarry, wherein it is our business to hew stones. Here is one, rather queer-looking, which the reader may admire or not, as he finds himself inclined :—

"In the course of some other business, Ursula Khan, a fine young lad, sixteen years old, son of one of the Sooraunee Mullicks, came in to impart to me his own and his father's uneasiness about past murders. "What,' he asked, 'is to be the law?'

"I asked him jokingly, 'What does it signify to a lad like you? How many men have you killed?' "He replied, modestly, 'Oh! I've only killed four, but father has killed eighty!'

"One gets accustomed to this state of society, but in England what monsters of cruelty would this father and son be considered. Indeed, few people would like to be in the same room with them. Yet, cæteris paribus, in Bunnoo they are rather respectable men."

It will thus be seen that the standard of respectability differs widely in different latitudes. Bunnoochee manners, again, are somewhat singular: the same Ursula Khan one day begged to be allowed to sit upon the carpet, and contemplate the Major's countenance, as he had fallen in love with him! The