Yule was first called from his useful obscurity in 1856.  The year before, the Sonthals in insurrection disturbed the long unbroken peace of the Delta.  These were a numerous non-Aryan, uncivilised, but industrious race, driven wild by local mismanagement, and the oppressions of Hindoo usurers acting through the regulation courts.  After the suppression of their rising, Yule was selected by Sir F. Halliday, who knew his man, to be Commissioner of the Bhagulpoor Division, containing some six million souls, and embracing the hill country of the Sonthals.  He obtained sanction to a code for the latter, which removed these people entirely from the Court system, and its tribe of leeches, and abolished all intermediaries between the Sahib and the Sonthal peasant.  Through these measures, and his personal influence, aided by picked assistants, he was able to effect, with extraordinary rapidity, not only their entire pacification, but such a beneficial change in their material condition, that they have risen from a state of barbarous penury to comparative prosperity and comfort.

George Yule was thus engaged when the Mutiny broke out, and it soon made itself felt in the districts under him.  To its suppression within his limits, he addressed himself with characteristic vigour.  Thoroughly trusted by every class—­by his Government, by those under him, by planters and by Zemindars—­he organised a little force, comprising a small detachment of the 5th Regiment, a party of British sailors, mounted volunteers from the districts, etc., and of this he became practically the captain.  Elephants were collected from all quarters to spare the legs of his infantry and sailors; while dog-carts were turned into limbers for the small three-pounders of the seamen.  And with this little army George Yule scoured the Trans-Gangetic districts, leading it against bodies of the Mutineers, routing them upon more than one occasion, and out-manoeuvring them by his astonishing marches, till he succeeded in driving them across the Nepaul frontier.  No part of Bengal was at any time in such danger, and nowhere was the danger more speedily and completely averted.

After this Yule served for two or three years as Chief Commissioner of Oudh, where in 1862 he married Miss Pemberton, the daughter of a very able father, and the niece of Sir Donald MacLeod, of honoured and beloved memory.  Then for four or five years he was Resident at Hyderabad, where he won the enduring friendship of Sir Salar Jung.  “Everywhere he showed the same characteristic firm but benignant justice.  Everywhere he gained the lasting attachment of all with whom he had intimate dealings—­except tigers and scoundrels.”