CHAPTER XI.

VISITATIONS OF THE CENTRAL PROVINCES-IMPERFECT ECCLESIASTICAL ARRANGEMENTS-DIFFICULTIES IN TRAVELLING THE BISHOP'S JOURNAL LETTERS-BENARES-NAGPORE-MHOW-SAUGOR-JHANSI-CAWNPORE

CONSECRATION OF THE MEMORIAL WELL-AGRA-BEGUM

OF BHOPAL CASTE ÉMEUTE IN ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE-THE BISHOP'S SPEECH-LETTER TO GOVERNMENT ON ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCES

-LETTERS.

IN November 1862, the Bishop left the hills for the Central Provinces. On the banks of the Ganges, he met his old friend and chaplain T. H. Burn, who had just arrived from England with a fresh instalment of health again to be exhausted in an Indian climate before two years were over. But the pleasure, though short-lived, was great to the Bishop. In his journal he wrote: Restoration to Burn is indeed a cause of the most abundant joy, and I thank God for it as a real comfort and help to me in my many needs and frequent perplexities.' The Central Provinces, the latest political division of British India, had been formed through the amalgamation of the province of Nagpore, annexed by Lord Dalhousie, with the Saugor and Nerbudda territories. In 1862 an exceedingly vigorous local government was rapidly establishing order and security; civilisation was slowly following, but ecclesiastical arrangements were in a peculiarly crude and incomplete state. The presence of chaplains from the Presidency of Madras at Kamptee and Seetabuldee, the two chief stations in Nagpore, was an anomaly and source of confusion. Scarcely a church was to be seen except the fine modern one at Seetabuldee, and numerous communities of Europeans, connected either

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JUNGLE TRAVELLING.

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with Government or the Great Central Railway, then in course of construction, were springing up, with a very inadequate supply of pastors. The whole region presented an unbroken soil for the Additional Clergy Society, whose labours the Bishop had so recently been stimulating. The Bishop's route lay through Benares, Mirzapore, and Jubbulpore, to Nagpore, where Christmas was spent. Thence, in due time, he reached the Nerbudda river, and, crossing it, passed through Holkar's territories, to visit the remote stations of Mhow and Indore, and finally, by way of Saugor, Jhansi, and Gwalior, regained the North-West Provinces and the land of railways, which seemed like life from the dead after a protracted experience of jungle travels. For this final section of the primary visitation presented throughout its course a sample of the same primitiveness of arrangements and barrenness of comforts for travellers which still linger in many parts of our Eastern empire, recalling the general aspect of British India within the memory of the present generation, and reminding the Indian bishop of these days that, amidst all the alleviations of his exile, he has occasionally to encounter on a small scale the loneliness, difficulties, and privations which fell to the daily lot of Heber, in his almost exploring journey in search of a few scattered clergy. As far as Nagpore the Bishop's progress was tolerably smooth, but from that point the toils of the tour fairly set in. The distances to be traversed were far less formidable from length than from the lack of resources for speedy locomotion in a region just roused from the semibarbarous stagnation of native rule. During many days and nights doolies (a lighter sort of palanquin) formed the chief homes of the Bishop, the chaplain, and the doctor. Occasionally the way lay simply through jungle. Tigers-happily unseen-were constantly heard of, and at one mountain ghât or pass, haunted by a man-eater, a whole village turned out with blazing torches as an

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escort through the perilous defile. Much help was afforded both in British territory and in the small native States, and tended to mitigate, though it could not avert, the annoyances arising from execrable roads, from the want of the usual staging bungalows, and the paucity of palanquin-bearers. Not much room, however, was left for the external adjuncts of a dignified position when comforts were few, when the commissariat supplies were scanty and precarious, or when for a night journey the capacious side of an elephant was accepted as a satisfactory exchange for the dusty doolie. But the kind welcome that awaited the travellers at every halt on their way, and the evident comfort and pleasure derived from Christian ordinances by those for whom their celebration was only a casual privilege, were the best reward for fatigue and discomforts. A visitation extending over three years and a half had served to reveal the needs of Christians sprinkled over the vast area of Northern India. Its completion left the Bishop with the conviction profoundly impressed on his mind that, amidst all the varied work of the diocese, no duty lay more prominently in his path, or was more entirely a personal responsibility, than that of providing the helps and ministrations of the Church for scattered sheep in the wilderness, in order that, as he once wrote, no one should be allowed to feel himself neglected or forgotten.'

This visitation journey was all but the only one which I did not share with my husband. The following extracts from an unbroken succession of letters addressed to myself will afford a sketch of his life between December 1862 and February 1863:—

Benares, November 30, 1862.

Yesterday I had a fatiguing, but by no means uninteresting, nor, as I trust, unprofitable day. At seven I proceeded to Sigra, and had some early work with each ordination

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ORDINATION AT BENARES.

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candidate separately. After breakfast all the missionaries and candidates assembled, and we had a really profitable conversation on various missionary topics-training colleges for natives, for example. I also propounded to them several questions which Stanley had asked Burn in England, and got to most of them very sensible and sufficient answers, which I hope to communicate to him. I wound up this part of the business by a short address on John xiii., and then had to listen, or rather to sit in a chair without listening, while Burn administered those wearying oaths and subscriptions to the candidates. Three hours were then devoted to visiting Jay Narain's college, the training school; and at 4 P.M. I confirmed fortyeight natives in the mission church. Altogether I was on the go for eleven hours, and was glad of a quiet evening. This morning at seven Burn and I took the parade service for the Bays. It was in the open air; the men were drawn up on three sides of a square. Burn read a brief selection from the prayers, and then I preached extempore, the whole thing being over in twenty minutes, which was about equally divided between prayers and sermon. To keep them standing longer in their stiff uniforms, with carbines and twenty rounds of ammunition, would not be conducive to their edification. At eleven I held the ordination and preached. There was a large congregation, and altogether, including the candidates, no less. than fourteen of the clergy partook together of the Holy Communion-certainly an impressive and memorable event in the most sacred of Hindu cities. All appeared in surplices, which had a decorous appearance, and was also memorable in a small way, as showing that evangelicals no longer consider it a point of duty and orthodoxy to prefer the uglier and less appropriate to the more picturesque and seemly garment.

I have seen again here and cannot but think that a man of such eminence wastes his time by spending three hours a day in teaching geography to the first class of a mission girls' school, while he might be the most effective of native pastors and evangelists. He is, I suppose, more or less the victim of irresolution, arising from the convulsive effects of a change of creed on a man of such deep feelings and subtle intellect, like the many now in England who are kept from a life of real usefulness by over-speculation on unsolved and

insoluble difficulties. When I see all these missionaries and their wives at work, wholly given up to the endeavour to promote the highest welfare of these Hindus, I feel that here is one great branch of the true evidence to the reality of Christianity, and to many of its doctrines, such as conversion, the difference between the Church and the world, spiritual holiness and self-sacrifice. The other branch is the New Testament itself, the life of our Lord and the moral teaching of His apostles. So we come to Coleridge's conclusions, that the two proofs of the truth of the Gospel are Christianity and Christendom. And against these proofs F. Newman and Theodore Parker and Comte thunder in vain.

Maihor, December 9, 1862.

... We had a visit yesterday from the Rajah of Nagode; he was splendidly dressed in gold brocade, with chobdars preceding him with silver maces, announcing his titles: This is he,' they exclaimed, whose head is as high as the heavens,' and so on. He is an insignificant-looking man, with his face bedaubed with mire and ashes, and though only about forty, he has scarcely any teeth, owing to excessive eating and drinking. He brought with him his son and heir, an intelligent boy, whom he ordered to recite for our edification the names of a hundred Hindu gods; and then, which was more to the purpose, to read from a book in the Nagri character. We advised him to have the youth taught English, which he says is going to be done. One wishes that this poor boy could be brought up under some better influence, but our Government is right not to separate forcibly these princelings from their fathers; and an English tutor has been engaged for the boy, though, as the finances of Nagode can only afford meagre funds for education, it is not likely that the instruction will be first-rate. In the evening, after dinner, we came on here, which is yet another native State whereof the rajah is a minor. These princes of Central India are Rajputs, sprung from the noblest and bravest blood in India; but certainly, from the specimens that we have seen and heard of, their degradation appears to be complete.

Jubbulpore, December 11, 1862. ... At Maihor my opinion of native princes was raised. Soon after breakfast, a present of fruits, sugar, and sweetmeats