famine, for it is a noteworthy fact that while thousands of Mohammedans have died and are still dying of hunger, no Pandit is to be met with who shows signs of starvation or even of pressing want. If attempts be made to control the Pandits, check their peculations and introduce some equality between them and the Mohammedans, they repair to the Governor, and with threats of cutting their throats before him, or abandoning the country with their gods, they bring him to their feet with submission, for they are holy Brahmins, and he is a devout Hindoo.

The writer speaks of the remains of prosperity which attest the time when the Kashmir nation had a name and fame.

But (says he) now within the valley the eye meets with tracts of unreclaimed swamps, fields thrown out of cultivation, and wretched hamlets in which half the houses are empty, and many more roofless and ruined. The appearance of the peasants is pitiable in the extreme. In the fields are women and children digging for edible weeds and roots. In Srinagar, the capital, there are vestiges of populousness, but the bazaars are sadly thinned, the suburbs are like cities of the dead, trade is either decaying or gone, and large numbers of the lower classes of people are so impoverished that they have no money to buy food, even when food is procurable. During the height of distress, if the inquirer asked for relief works he was shown a few labourers collected on roads near the English quarter, but these would loudly complain to him that they got no wages. If he asked for Government poorhouses he was conducted to enclosures where handfuls of boiled rice, insufficient to keep a dog alive, were given out to hundreds of people in the most awful state that can be imagined from hunger and disease. Sometimes the supply of rice was not sufficient to go round the throng, and then an indescribable scene of confusion ensued, in which men, women, and children were beheld fighting and tearing one another for the scrapings of the pans of rice, while soldiers armed with sticks laid about them on every side; but in vain, and the sleek Pandits, not one of whom had felt the pangs of hunger, sat enveloped in their cosy blankets, unconcerned witnesses of the agony of their Mohammedan fellow-subjects. These are not the inventions of a disordered fancy, but statements of facts as noted by an eye-witness whose painful duty it has been to observe them without power or opportunity to interfere.

It may, however, be alleged that the mortality during the last famine in Madras was greater than that of Kashmir, and that if the Maharajah is to be blamed, we are more culpable. But the difference is this, that every effort was made by us, both by public and by private exertion, to meet the calamity; that there was no wholesale official malversation in the feeding of the sufferers, no notorious and unpunished misappropriation of grain, no cruelty in the treatment of those who were perishing and who tried to migrate, no religious distinction in which one class was allowed to die without compunction, while another class was maintained in plenty.

The writer then proceeds to give an account of the frightful misgovernment of this unhappy country; the peculation, rapine, and extortion which run apace without let or hindrance; and concludes one of the most instructive and at the same time harrowing documents I have ever read with these words:

Here is a question of the fate of a whole people who are being gradually destroyed, and whom sad experience has taught to hope nothing from their ruler.

The British public can feel sympathy for the sufferings of the Christian Rayahs in Turkey. Have they no blessing left for the unhappy Mussulmans of Kashmir, whose lot they could ameliorate by a word or by a hint ?

Can we suppose that the other Indian Mohammedans are ignorant of this oppression, and of the actual destruction of their brethren by Brahmin rule, and that they do not dread and detest it? It is no use saying to them, as I have said, such a state of things cannot occur under the English Raj. They reply that it is a question solely of degree. It is true they are not plundered and openly starved by their Hindoo fellow-subjects, but they are pushed from their seats by them from place, emolument, dignity; and the vista of their future is penury. My object in writing this article is to direct public opinion in England towards strengthening the hands of the authorities in India, who would, I am confident, gladly endeavour to offer a brighter future to the Empress Queen's Mohammedan subjects.

If I appear in this paper to have spoken adversely or disrespectfully of Hindoos in general, it has been far from my intention. I have no feeling in regard to them except one of sympathy and regard. I rejoice to have witnessed their remarkable progress. I welcome them without one grudging thought in their advance to full and common citizenship. It is idle to shut our eyes and not to recognise that advance, or to sit upon the safety-valve, and not foresee the consequence. It is Brahminism, that incarnation of spiritual domination, ignorance, superstition, rapacity, and lust, which is seeking to regain its supremacy, that I denounce, together with the follies, conceits, and windy declamations of young Bengal. These were the classes who were encouraged to come to the front, and to assume the spokesmanship for the rest of India, during the late Viceroyalty. Our government of India is essentially a government of prestige, of a belief in our enormous resources, of our unswerving justice, and of our capacity to rule, and if that belief be shaken, the hand of power becomes at once palsied. All the great material improvements which are immensely increasing the resources of India have tended to reduce rather than increase that prestige. The number of European railway officials, engineers, station masters, guards, many of whom are rough and uneducated, many also violent and dissolute, has done much to lower the respect which the white face commanded. I have myself witnessed scenes in the streets of Ajmere which fully account for the difference of the reception an ordinary Englishman meets with there, and that which he experiences in other parts of Rajpootana, where such excesses are unknown. All this should make us doubly cautious to avoid unseemly differences in high places, which naturally encourage the native classes to whom I have referred to impute weakness to us, and to imagine that discord reigns in our councils. I have but little fear of any internal

overthrow of our rule, either from military mutiny or the uprising of the masses, nor, if proper precautions be observed, which are sure to be, am I alarmed at the prospect of Russian invasion. What I do dread are the writings and speeches of theoretic Englishmen, absolutely ignorant of the condition of men and things in India, the stereotyped conservatism of the lower classes, their placid ignorance, the confusion and failure which must follow the forcing on them precipitately institutions for which they are not prepared. It is no question of retrogression or of even standing still, but of caution and preparation. If the administrative functions in India once get out of gear and in incompetent hands, results are sure to follow which will create a feeling of disgust and despair at home, and a desire to be rid of a burden, not only intolerable, but accompanied with shame. And yet this mighty possession, apart from the actual advantages we derive from it, is worth, for the sake of humanity, almost any sacrifice to retain. As one travels through India one naturally reads the records of the famous cities one visits; they are all, one after another, written in blood. Begin your reading in the Deccan, with the annals of the Mohammedan dynasties of Bijapore, Gulburgah, Golconda; all tell the same tale. The Sultan of Bijapore quarrels with the Rajah of Vizanagram on account of some musicians, and vows to erect a pyramid of 100,000 Hindoo heads; the Rajah in his turn vows to erect a similar monument of 200,000 heads of the subjects of the Sultan. Each was as good as his word. As you advance northwards, you proceed through lands laid desolate, not at long intervals but almost continuously, till nothing remained to attract the Mahratta and Pindarree spoiler. Go still further north, and though during the time of the great Emperors comparative peace was maintained by their sword, yet when it fell from the grasp of their inert descendants, insurrection followed insurrection, invasion followed invasion. In fact the history of India, from the earliest authentic accounts of it until the time of the supremacy of the English, is one dreadful dreary record of treachery, outbreak, robbery, spoliation, murder, massacre, and of all the miseries that can beset the human race. What greater or more noble sight can a traveller see, than the profound quiet, the absolute security, the Pax Romana which prevails from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin? Surely this is essentially God's work. Surely it is our duty to continue it. We may rely on it that we can do much to lighten our task, great though it be, by gaining the affections and trust of the Mohammedan portion of the population, once, but no longer hostile, and it rests with ourselves to do so.

W. H. GREGORY.

A FLYING VISIT TO THE UNITED

STATES.

THE following pages give some impressions formed upon various matters during a recent flying visit to the United States.

Leaving Liverpool on the 26th of August, I made the outward passage in the Germanic,' one of the vessels of the White Star Company's fleet. I returned in the 'Servia,' a vessel of the Cunard line. Both ships are fine examples of the Atlantic Liners of the modern type. The distance from Queenstown to New York is 2,800 miles. We made the outward passage in nine days. We were detained during the first three days by strong headwinds and gales, which for many hours brought our rate of steaming down to eight knots. In crossing the banks of Newfoundland we passed through a dense fog. For nearly twenty-four hours the engines were slowed to half-speed, the ship steaming eleven knots an hour. The dangers of collision in such circumstances may readily be apprehended. They are intensified in that season of the year when the presence of ice is to be expected. Steam whistles may be heard, and thus approaching ships may be avoided, but the much-dreaded iceberg is as silent as the tombstone, and, like that emblem, death reigns in its vicinity. Captain McKay, of the 'Servia,' has given much consideration to this subject, and has published some valuable suggestions. He recommends that the Government should be invited to despatch a suitable vessel to the North Atlantic, which should follow one of these immense masses of ice from the north to the sunny south, daily chronicling its course and diminution of size. He has proposed that a west and east track or line should be definitely fixed for the great steam traffic between England and the United States, the western track across the meridian of 50° W., at 42° 40′ N., and the eastern track across the meridian of 50° W., at 40° 40′ N. These routes would carry steamers south of the Banks, and avoid the dense fogs which hang in the region of the Great Banks. Captain McKay has wisely urged that a conference of shipowners should be held at Liverpool to consider the subject.

The Germanic' in ordinary weather steams fifteen knots, but at 4 P.M. on Friday, September 3rd, the Etruria,' of the Cunard Line,

was seen from the bridge coming up astern. She gained upon us rapidly, and at 7 P.M. steamed past the Germanic,' having an advantage in speed of nearly five knots an hour. The Etruria' had left Liverpool two days after the Germanic,' and landed her passengers in New York several hours earlier. As an achievement in ocean steaming the construction of the 'Etruria' and the sister ship 'Umbria represents a great advance. From a commercial point of view, it is less satisfactory. It is generally understood that the management of the White Star line is able to divide a handsome dividend. To the holder of the Cunard Company's shares no dividend has been paid for several years. It cannot be sound business to give the public a service at a speed never yet equalled at a charge insufficient to yield a reasonable profit. Of two things one: the speed must be reduced, or the fares raised. To the French Messageries and the North German Lloyds' liberal subsidies are paid by their respective governments. We have a national antipathy to subsidies. To such a step we can only have recourse in the last resort. There is every reason to believe that the public would be ready to pay fares on a scale sufficient to cover the cost of the greatly increased speed at which they are now being transported across the ocean.

Life on board a full-powered passenger ship is monotonous, but not necessarily tedious. If the varied occupations and absorbing interests of life on shore are wanting, is it not the complaint of most of us that we want more of the leisure we command during a long passage across the ocean? On board ship mutual sympathies are soon discovered, and acquaintance grows rapidly into friendship. On the broad waters of the Atlantic many interesting experiences were interchanged. Soldiers and civilians, travellers and merchants, each had the story of his life to tell. All that had been gathered up by thought, by action, and by culture, was poured forth, to the great advantage of those who listened.

The passengers in the saloon were but a small proportion of those conveyed in the Germanic.' There were on board nearly one thousand emigrants, recruited from every nationality of Europe. Among them were Jews in large numbers from the Danubian principalities, Germans, Finlanders, Swedes, Norwegians, Irish, Welsh, and a few English and Scotch. Competition has brought down the cost of a passage across the Atlantic to the moderate charge of 4l., and it has created a beneficial rivalry in the accommodation afforded. The quarters are clean and airy. A doctor, steward, and matron keep watch over the emigrants, and the dietary is liberal. But with all these improvements the conditions of life on board ship inevitably bring out the sharp and painful contrast between the luxury which wealth commands and the hard life of the labouring poor. The distance is short from the luxuries of the saloon to the bare