Then I was returning to you, looking forward to your
dear welcome, complete success having crowned
my mission to China, I am now going from you on
this difficult and unwelcome errand.... I feel
as if I knew every stone of the place where I
passed so many weary hours, waiting for Frederick,
with a fever on me, or coming on. Gros is in
the next room bargaining for rubies and sapphires;
but I do not feel disposed to indulge in such
extravagances.... The steamer in which we are
to proceed to-morrow looks very small, with diminutive
portholes. We shall be a large party, and,
I fear, very closely packed.
[Sidenote: Russell on the Indian Mutiny.]
May 22nd.—Have you read Russell’s book on the Indian Mutiny? I have done so, and I recommend it to you. It has made me very sad; but it only confirms what I believed before respecting the scandalous treatment which the natives receive at our hands in India. I am glad that he has had courage to speak out as he does on this point. Can I do anything to prevent England from calling down on herself God’s curse for brutalities committed on another feeble Oriental race? Or are all my exertions to result only in the extension of the area over which Englishmen are to exhibit how hollow and superficial are both their civilisation and their Christianity?... The tone of the two or three men connected with mercantile houses in China whom I find on board is all for blood and massacre on a great scale, I hope they will be disappointed; but it is not a cheering or hopeful prospect, look at it from what side one may.
[Sidenote: Shipwreck.]
Galle, May 23rd.—L’homme propose, mais.... I ended my letter yesterday by telling you that I was about to embark for Singapore amid torrents of rain and growlings of thunder; but I little thought what was to follow on this inauspicious embarkation. We got on board the Peninsular and Oriental steamer ‘Malabar’ with some difficulty, there was so much sea where the vessel was lying; and I was rather disgusted to find, when I mounted the deck, that some of the cargo or baggage had not yet arrived, and that we were not ready for a start. I was already half wet through, and there was nothing for it but to sit still on a bench under a dripping awning. About twenty minutes after I had established myself in this position, the wind suddenly shifted, and burst upon us with great fury from the north-east. The monsoon, now due, comes from the south-west, and therefore a gale from the north-east was unexpected, though I must say that, as we were being assailed by constant thunderstorms, we had no right, in my opinion, to consider ourselves secure on any side against the assaults of the wind. Be this however as it may, the gale was so violent that I observed to some one near me that it reminded me of a typhoon. I had hardly made this remark, when a severe shock, accompanied by a grating sound, conveyed to me