LIFE IN INDIA.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9470, 12 June 1909, Page 2

LIFE IN INDIA.

At a complimentary dinner given to Sir Edward Henry, Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, and late Inspector-General of f ol * c oin Bengal, by the Authors’ Club, London. some remarkably interesting reminiscences were given by the guest of the evening. . Sir Edward said when he arrived in India the assassination of Lora Mayo was still the topic of conversation, and there were minor details which threw a strong light upon the causes which brought it about and which he could not remember to have seen in anv public account. Shere was an Afridi. He soon deeded in making himself a greac favourite. All was going well with him until one day he received from his village a message that was fraught with great consequences. He learnt that the leading clansman of his tribe had been killed, and that he was required to carry blood feud. Two of b«s olahamen brought the message, and they were to assist him in carrying out ms duty. He went to the Oommie^oner and asked for leave. The sioner pressed him as to his re • He gave an unsatisfactory eX P l ®“® tion, and the Oommiasioner who was well versed in the ways of the Afridis, became suspicious, ana ae dined to give leave. Shere All therefore had to absent himself. He joined his olanamen, they picked up the track of their enemy, they followed him up. and slew him. Unfortunately they slew him just within our border, H»s two clansman escaped, and he, believing that no one had witnessed the deed, went back to bis postbut there was circumstantial evidence which incriminated him. be was arrested, tried, and convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment, ae appealed, but was imsDOoessfu . Shere Ali conducted himself well, did the tasks assigned to him. ana finally, was made barber to the convict settlement. This man, a soldier by instinct, was compelled to perform this menial work, and a sens of injustice ate deeply into his sou . Just about that time the news reached there that the Chief Justice of Bengal had been stabtod to death on the steps of the , Hl ß^ Lord Mayo arrived at tile settlement, and went all over it under a strong escort. He had practically accomplished this day’s work when he thought he would like to see the sunset from the top of a mountain about 1100 ft high. Shere Ali had made up his mind to kill him, and had apparently confided his desire to one man only, an old Mutiny prisoner. - He failed to identify Lord Mayo. There was one pony on the island, and Lord Mavo rode this pony up the hill. Share Ali said to himself : “That must be the Lord Sahib. He followed it thropgh the jungle all the tway up, never getting his opportunity. He followed it down again, still not getting his opportunity, but, finally, aa Lord Mayo was getting into the boat to go away he dashed forward and stabbed him to death. When arrested and questianed it was suspected he must have some accomplice orjeonfederate. The question was put to him, and he said‘“l have bnt one confederate, and‘that is God.” From this it was inferred that the tragedy must bs due to sonib Wahabi conspiracy. So a clever Hindu police officer was sent to the island, and in time, he succeeded, through a disguise, in winning Shere Ali’s confidence, and the night before his execution, he said to this police officer; ‘Now, will you go to my village and tell my people that it was I, Shere All, who did this deed.” The police officer said: “How will they know that I came from you!” Shere All had a cloth round his body with a big border. He tore off a small portion of this border, and said: “Show them that border, and they Will know.” Sir Edward thought that this was a good illustration of how our laws do not always work well. The officer in, charge of the Andaman Settlement at the time was Colonel Donald Stuart. It looked as if his official career was at an end, but fortune was more discriminating. He shortly afterwards took part in the Afghan Campaign, and subsequently became Com-mander-in-Chief in India. , FAMINE (WORK,

Soon after Sir Edward joined he waa drafted to a district where there had "been a complete failure of the rains Daring that year, 187 d, in an enormous area there had heen no crops, and it became necessary for the Government to carry out relief operations on a mom extensive scale. Those who came to the test works got their wages in full and had opportunities for purchasing grain. The officers also had to ride from bonse to bouse and find those «ase3 of persons who from reasons of caste and so forth were precluded from going to the teat works. This brought him into contact with the people. He rememberedlfbn one occasion he found two special correspondents, one of whom was Archibald Forbes. In the early morning ihoy heard a great commotion in the taut occupied by those two, and found one correspondent very angry. His notebook had disappeared, and it was quite obvious that he suspected Archibald Forbes of making away with it. They hunted for a long time, when suddenly they heard a cry: “I have got it./’ and a Villager came rushing in with a ragged note-book. A jackal had eaten the morocco cover, bnt had left she remains intact. Not very long afterwards an event happened which certainly paralleled in its fatalities the recent earthquake in Southern Italy. There were three or four islands in the estuary of the Megua. A great storm arose one night, and 100,000 people were , swept into the Bay of Bengal. The water in the wells became brackish and another 100,000 died of fever and cholera. THE MAKING OF A DICTIONARY. ""He was afterwards among the Sonthals, a uon-Aryan people. While ha waa there a work apperaed called a Uomparative Dictionary of the Non-Aryan Languages.” It was most favourably criticised, all the critics having one great qualification—that they none of them knew a single word of one cf the languages. There was s> missionary there who wrote to the newspapers to say that although it was very reckless of him after the verdict of so many learned persona to venture to criticise the must do so. He turned to the word “kill,” and found a Sonthal word pf five syllables, where it ought to have been a word of two syllables. He turned to the preface and saw that the author said he derived some of his information from an intelligent member of the police who was a Sonthal. He waa asked for an

Equivalent of the word “kill.” He did not understand. Then he was asked what be would be if he were billed and he gave the Sonthal equivalent for “a killed policeman. ” That was duly given as the equivalent for “kill.” THE MARKS ON THE - TREES. The bast story that Sir Edward told was in connection with the unrest consequent on a great religious festival, to which thousands of pilgrims came. It was stated in the newspapers that their track was marked by daubs being left upon trees. The moment the newspapers took this up everybody began notioiug things they had never noticed before and there were danba everywhere. Volunteers were served cut with ammunition, and everybody got very alarmed. The Government of India made an inquiry. Officers were sent out with instructions to take the daub off the trees, pack it in paper, measure the distance fro™ the ground, and send the daub and the particulars to the Calcutta Museum, where there was a professor learned in hairs. The daubs were examined by this expert, and he found that where the daub was the height of a buffalo only buffalo hairs were found in it, ana where the height of a pig only pig hairs, and so forth. The report established very clearly that tne daubs were dne to natural causes that for some unexplained reason the parasites had been more active that year, that the animals had therefore wallowed more and rubbed more.