the range sinks into lower hills, presenting a softer outline, with passes winding over them. The long coarse grass of the lower country is here exchanged for a shorter and finer kind, and everything about him tells the traveller that he has now reached a land admirably adapted both for horned cattle and for sheep. He finds, too, that the country produces abundant crops of wheat, oat, and other cereals of England; while he is refreshed by the taste of excellent peaches, apricots, apples, pears, and other fruits of a temperate climate. Scattered at intervals over the whole face of the country are vast clusters of hills. These localities seem to have been subject to violent convulsions of nature. The hills, or rather mountains, rear their rugged or scarped sides in every fantastic form, overhanging deep and gloomy glens, the channels of rushing rivers or foaming torrents."1 1 “ Encyclopædia Britannica,” vol. xv. p. 802.

CHAPTER XV.

BRITISH INDIA.

THE PROGRESS OF BRITISH TRADE AND CONQUEST IN INDIA-ITS

B

RITISH India is hardly, according to the usual sense of the word, a colony; and the memorable story of its gradual acquisition forms a separate and eventful portion of the annals of our empire. Only some of the most salient features in that story, therefore, need be briefly touched upon in this volume.

The great peninsula was unvisited by Englishmen, with the exception of a few daring travellers by land and sea, until a century after Vasco de Gama's discovery in 1498 of a passage to it by way of the Cape of Good Hope. In 1599 the English East India Company was formed; and in 1601 its first trading fleet went out to sow the seeds of commerce and conquest, not on the mainland, but in some of the rich islands south-west of it. The first British factory on the peninsula was established in 1612, by Captain Best, at Surat; and after that commerce throve mightily, and conquest slowly advanced during a hundred and fifty years. The Dutch the Portuguese, and the French, were rivals of the English in the prosperous trade, and most of the early fighting was with them. In furtherance of their strife, however, the Europeans

sought allies among the natives of the country. Thus each acquired a sort of jurisdiction far beyond the narrow limits of their forts and factories; and at length the English, having driven out their rivals, found themselves associated with numerous local potentates who acknowledged their supremacy, and at variance with others who had aided the cause of the now defeated European rivals. In that way the conquest of India was brought about in the middle of the eighteenth century. The daring and dishonourable exploits of Clive and Warren Hastings are well known. The territorial rule of the East India Company began with Clive's war in the Carnatic, and his great victory at Plassey in 1757. It was partly won by aid of some native soldiers, now for the first time employed under English officers, and destined, during just a century, to be the main instruments of English power in overcoming one native prince after another, and in acquiring great districts in quick succession, until the whole peninsula was brought into subjection, and kept in order by means of the famous Sepoy army. At the end of the century, the Sepoys, overpetted in some respects and needlessly offended in others, turned against their employers. The great Indian Mutiny of 1857 was the result; and, overcome by bravery and martial wisdom rarely equalled in the whole world's history, it led to the transference of the vast Indian empire from the rule of the East India Company to the direct dominion of the British Crown.

The territories thus transferred comprise an area of more than 1,000,000 square miles, eight times as large as that of Great Britain and Ireland, and con

tain a population five times as numerous. The inhabitants more than suffice for the cultivation of the land and the development of its resources; and the only openings in it for European residents are as agents of Government, teachers, and traders. Much has yet to be done in education of the people as to better ways of agriculture, and more useful methods of interchanging their commodities, and great progress has been made in these respects during recent years. The revenue, which was £27,000,000 in 1851, and £36,000,000 in 1859, exceeded £44,000,000 in 1864, and £48,000,000 in 1868. The imports of merchandise, worth £4,261,106 in 1834, rose in value to £11,558,788 in 1850, and to £36,093,938 in 1868. The exports of the same years were £7,993,420, £18,164,149, and £53,062,165. The incoming trade had been multiplied nearly nine times, and the outgoing trade nearly seven times, in the course of fourand-thirty years. The raw cotton alone sent from India to the United Kingdom in 1864 was worth nearly £38,000,000; and the cotton goods sent back exceeded in value £12,000,000. Besides cotton, this great territory, possessing nearly every variety of soil and temperature, furnishes rice, wheat, sugar, coffee, tea, silk, wool, flax, indigo, and other dyes, with spices, oils, and a hundred other commodities.

Bombay, the great trading capital of India, contains, with its suburbs, hardly fewer than a million inhabitants; and the population of Calcutta, the centre of government, and scarcely inferior as a resort of trade, exceeds a million. The English residents in the whole dependency, however, including 84,083 military men, numbered only 125,945 in 1861.

CHAPTER XVI.

OUR ASIATIC COLONIES.

CEYLON ITS EARLY CIVILIZATION -ITS SUBJECTION TO THE PORTUGUESE, THE DUTCH, AND THE ENGLISH-ITS PRESENT CONDITION-THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS: PENANG, MALACCA, AND SINGAPORE-HONG KONG-BORNEO AND LABUAN-THE

ACHIEVEMENTS OF SIR JAMES BROOKE. [1795-1869.]

HE East India Company, formed "for the advancement of trade and merchandise to the East Indies and the islands and countries thereabout," found so much profit in its intercourse with the mainland of Hindostan, that, during two centuries in which other European nations were establishing in them forts, factories, and colonies, it gave little thought to the outlying portions of the East Indies. Not till near the close of the eighteenth century was their value understood or effort made to appropriate some of them as dependencies of England And even then this was done rather in jealousy of the rival nations than in the interests of trade.

So especially it was with Ceylon. This beautiful island, with an area of nearly 25,000 square miles, and therefore not much smaller than Ireland, was famous for its wealth and civilization in the days of Alexander the Great. Anuradpoora, its ancient capital, founded in the year 437 B.C., covered sixteen square miles, and was adorned with splendid archi