haustible, and the quality of the mineral is such as, at all events, meets a ready sale at remunerative rates. A very large proportion of the coal serves excellently all ordinary purposes; its heat-giving power, as measured relatively to its bulk, is not very high; its ash is greater than in the good kinds of European coal-that is to say, the bituminous matter was originally mixed with sand or clay, &c.; and this renders the coal unfit for sea-going steamers. Another disadvantage which also unfits it for such a use, is found in its tendency to crumble; but, worst of all, in the presence of iron pyrites, which, as is well known, is apt to ignite under certain conditions, or, as the phenomenon is usually described, is liable to spontaneous combustion. With all these disadvantages, the Damooda coal has been sometimes used in seagoing steamers; and although it cannot be expected that this employment of it can prove permanent, there are many others which will furnish it with a brisk demand: all internal navigation, all railways in Eastern India, depend on it; although it cannot be coked, the coal is successfully used on all the lines now open in the east and north of India. Iron, too, has been made with the Damooda coal, although it is probable that if this comes to be done on a large scale, the impurities of the fuel may cause some trouble and expense. This coal-field is being vigorously worked, greatly to the advantage of the owners and of the public at large. of which we can confidently speak, comes that of the Nerbudda Valley. There are now seams opened on the property of a coal company there, which in thickness, ease of working, &c., are scarcely surpassed by anything in the Damooda field, while the quality of the mineral is equal to the very best beds of that field. The future of this company depends entirely on the railway, which will furnish its only means of reaching a market first by taking advantage of the coal in the construction of the line itself, and subsequently by carrying it down to the sea. - It seems strange that a few lines should contain the pith of all that is certainly known on a subject on which so many volumes have been written, but it nevertheless is so. All, however, necessarily depends on the meaning we attach to the words certainly known: for instance - of the coal in Cutch, many persons would no doubt think themselves warranted in confidently asserting that it is certainly known to be commercially worthless-a conclusion to which we demur, because no satisfactory investigation has yet taken place. We do not, then, certainly know that there is no coal available in Cutch; it is improbable, but still doubtful. Again, in the Punjab hills, precisely the same observation applies. We have no doubt that the officers who went into raptures on the discovery of a few stumps of semi-carbonised lignite, were in error; and we readily accept the explanation offered by the scientific men who were subsequently called in; but The coal of Palamow and of the Rajma- from the point of view of the public, their hal district is certainly inferior to that of the evidence must not be taken as finally closing Damooda field. In neither case, however, the case. Upon these subjects much ignohave the capabilities of seams been so fully rance, much vanity, much self-interest, much ascertained, and in both it is stated that such vindictiveness, are brought into play; and coal as they yield has met a remunerative the public cannot too cautiously scrutinise sale for brick-making and other purposes in the statements which are so confidently laid which great purity is not necessary. At before them, awarding praise and blame with Kururbari the quality of the fuel is certainly equal injustice. excellent, at least equal to the best obtained from the Damooda field, and there can be no doubt but that the railway now being constructed in the direction of this little field will bring the coal into vigorous working. At present the excessive cost of carriage restricts all mining operations there within very narrow limits. Still narrower limits are by the same cause assigned to the coal of Cherra Poonji, on the eastern frontier of Bengal; indeed, its geographical position, and the physical difficulties which impede its carriage, preclude its ever being profitably worked, unless it is to be applied to some local purpose. Still, it is in quality very decidedly superior to any other Indian coal which has up to this time been thoroughly examined. Next among the coal localities Coal is already known to exist in a great number of places throughout that part of Central India which lies south of the Nerbudda, the northern portion of the Deccan, and eastwards from thence throughout Rewah, Sirguja, Chota Nagpore, and Sumbulpore; and it has been discovered in several places along the flank of the Himalayas, from the Darjeeling terai eastwards up the valley of Assam. About these deposits everything, save only the existence of the coal, is obscure. Its quality as a mineral, its physical characters, whether it can be easily mined and readily made available for commerce, its position as to the means of transit and markets, everything is doubtful. The general conclusion to which all that we know of India points is, that the English man who now takes his capital to Australia [ject merely from the planter's point of view, or New Zealand, may apply it far more pro- and not discussing the policy of the changes fitably in India, and that certain branches of now in contemplation. The necessity of mining, as well as of agriculture and trade, paying the government land revenues due offer him an inviting field. upon each estate on the fixed day, on pain of forfeiture, has produced a sense of insecurity, especially in Europeans, who may be obliged to go away, and are not always able to leave behind them agents whom they can trust to make the payments; and every one is agreed that uncertainty of tenure has acted most unfavourably on all branches of agriculture, and in many ways not readily traceable at first sight. Of agriculture proper, as carried on by individuals, we have not hitherto spoken; and yet this is one of the manifold ways in which the Oriental and the Western races may advance in material comfort and in happiness through intercourse with each other. We will at once lay it down that Englishmen cannot compete in India with the natives of India in manual labour of any kind, and that the idea of a British colony in Hindu- Many believe that the recently accorded stan, as the word colony is generally under- privilege will exercise a powerful influence stood, cannot be entertained for a moment on the indigo trade, will gradually change by those who have practically considered the the system on which the growth of the plant innumerable obstacles, social, political, and has been managed, and this even in the old ethnological. But an Englishman under- indigo districts. At all events, it opens a taking the management of land, and endea- new field to the business. There are unvouring to increase the quantity, improve doubtedly in many districts where lands the quality, and extend the varieties of the may now be purchased in fee simple, conproductions of the soil, would find himself siderable areas well suited to the crop, but engaged in an enterprise on which none of which would never have been used for the his neighbours had ever entered, and attempt-purpose under the old system. ing a task which they have never associated either with their interests or their duties. Difficulties he would have to encounter, no doubt, great and numerous, but certainly not insurmountable, inasmuch as they have been surmounted. His success would be an unmixed advantage to every one below and around him, for he would fill a place which is now practically vacant. The climate, too, which would be fatal to the poor European, is by no means so unfriendly as has been sometimes supposed to a man whose habits are regular, and who can surround himself with the means of avoiding the effects of its extremes. It is well known that bygone estimates of the value of European life in India, framed when habits were less regular, houses few and bad, and comforts less easily procurable, must be rearranged, and that insurance rates and pension-fund subscriptions are based on conditions which no longer obtain. Our remarks are applicable to the occupation by Europeans of land in any part of British India, even in the most populous districts, but they apply with tenfold force to uncultivated lands in parts of the country not at present thickly inhabited. The power of purchasing land in fee simple will probably be taken advantage of by wealthy natives as well as by foreigners. That the privilege should be at once seized on was not to be expected, but it will be more and more valued as our influence extends, as confidence increases, and as trade spreads. We are now looking at the sub. But it is in the case of the ordinary holding of land for general farming purposes, that the new rules will effect the greatest and most beneficial changes. At present the landholder (zemindar), whether native or European, as a rule takes no interest whatever in agricultural improvement; he spends neither trouble nor money on the soil; he extracts from his villagers, or still worse, from middlemen, who themselves deal with the ryot, the actual cultivator, as much as he can; but he seldom considers it his interest to make improvements at his own cost, for the sake of prospective gain. Even when he clears a patch of jungle which he adds to his estate, the plan followed-at least in Bengal-is to let squatters settle on the parts they clear for themselves, and cultivate for their own benefit for a few years without paying any thing, after which the zemindar either resumes the land or claims rent. In the case of the Sunderbunds, the fine islands in the delta of the Ganges, some few of the holders of grants have, we believe, actually invested money in the construction of embankments; but the whole sum thus sunk would be found ludicrously disproportionate to the value of the land and to the rents actually realised from it. We may hope, however, that when men can actually call the land their own, roads will be made through estates by their owners; tanks will be built, or what are called bunds erected, for irrigation; jungle will be cleared; the intelligent proprietor will try different modes of cultivating the ordinary crops, and will introduce new | Their surface is varied by picturesque unones as experience and an intelligent appre- dulations, and the landscape presents the ciation of the condition may suggest. In most charming combination of hill and dale, Bengal, oil-seeds and fibres will certainly, running water and well-grown timber. The when taken up in this way, prove an abund- deep gorges and ravines leading down to the ant source of a most profitable trade; to- lower levels offer again special beauties, and bacco, too, is certainly susceptible of an the view from some parts of the edges of improvement which may bring it into com- the highest plateau is, in its way, unequalled. petition with the choicest varieties in the Looking down the dark-wooded ravine at his market; elsewhere cotton and flax. In feet, the eye of the traveller follows the short, it appears to us that even in the old grassy undulation of the lower plateaux, settled districts the English landholder broken by green woods and rocky hills, until would find ample room for the profitable it rests on the distant plain, on which a white exercise of his skill and energy; and that, thread marks the sandy course of some by applying them to the common produc- far-off tributary of the Mahanuddi or the tions of the soil, he could reap large and Ganges. certain profits. But if he will deal kindly and fairly with natives, and gradually at tract labour by offering good terms, he may find perhaps still greater advantage in carrying on agricultural pursuits in some of the wilder and less-thickly inhabited districts. There are many places among the highlands of Hindustan where elevation above the sea gives the climate a character, not, it is true, European, but radically different from that of the plains of India. We do not now speak of the ridges and valleys of the Himalayan range, where our Sanitaria are perched at an elevation of from 5000 to 8000 feet above the sea, but of those parts of the peninsula south of that range, which rise to heights of 2000 feet and upwards. There are here about 4000 square miles of this kind of country, less than half of which is occupied by the choicest soil, at the highest level. This highest level is 3600 feet on the Amarkantac table-land. A few of the hills rise higher, but this is about the level of the country to which our remarks apply. Here the rich black soil is covered with grass, which grows green all the year round, and is never parched up by the hot blasts of May; the nights are always cool, and light breezes prevent the heat from being at any time oppressive. Herds of cattle are driven up here from the plains, when fodder fails them there, to enjoy the supply perennial in this favoured locality. The place has been reported on as a site for a sanitarium and Let us take as an example the Mundla for a military colony: wheat, barley, and country, premising that many like it exist many of the crops of Upper India grow luxelsewhere. This district lies as nearly as uriantly in the very few spots where anymay be in the very centre of the peninsula; thing of the kind has been tried; tea, it is it is a little nearer to the mouths of the supposed, would certainly succeed, cotton Ganges on the east than to that of the Ner- most probably, and perhaps coffee; horsebudda on the west, and a straight line drawn breeding, cattle-feeding, and even sheep, from the most northerly point of the Bay of might be made profitable by the European Bengal to the extreme north of the Gulf of settler: the forests of part of the district are Cambay will pass through it. It forms a source of the best lac known in the mar what may fairly be considered as the culmi-ket. There are hundreds of square miles of nating point of Central India, although high- such land absolutely without even a titular er levels are reached in many other parts of proprietor, and thinly inhabited by a few the country; and the head waters of three savages so utterly low in the scale of hugreat rivers, the Nerbudda, the Mahanuddi, manity that they will not cultivate crops of and the Soane, start from the highest part corn on a soil rich to profusion, but prefer of the plateau, and flow to the west, the to burn a patch of jungle on the steep slopes, south-east, and the east, respectively. The where a wretched seed called kootkee (Paniground rises on all sides by a series of steps, cum miliare), and closely resembling what is each forming a plateau, and separated from known as a 'bird-seed,' grows without any that below it by a line of escarpment. The further trouble to them, needing neither slopes of these escarpments, and the valleys spade nor plough; and on such portions of formed by the irregularities of their outlines, this as the wild creatures of the forest canare mostly covered with noble forests, di- not eat up they are contented to eke out a versified here and there by rocky bluffs. miserable existence. The plateaux themselves are open prairies, The prospects and labours of the Eurocovered with grass interspersed with patches pean settler in a place like this would, of of fine forest, and watered by numerous course, be very different from those of the streams. Nor are they absolutely flat. purchaser of an estate in a populous and longL-11 VOL. CXIII. settled part of the country: he might prob- | rich, and vegetation luxuriant. Between the ably need less capital; his life would be Sittang and the Salween lies a very large more like that in the bush or the backwoods; the difficulties against which he would have to contend would be of a totally different nature; but he would have many advantages. The climate is fine, the country beautiful, his European habits and tastes might be much more closely followed, and he might much more easily come to look on the place as a home. tract of country, with a minimum elevation of 2000 feet above the sea, once highly cultivated and populous, and which a powerful and just Government will, we believe, succeed in restoring to its former state of prosperity. Here Englishmen can live in a fine climate, and do for the general agriculture of the country what we have attempted to describe in speaking of other parts of our The three great districts of Chittagong, territories; and vast tracts of the upper part Sumbulpore, and the Sunderbunds are also of the great valley are well adapted to the well deserving of mention in connexion with growth of cotton, indigo, sugar, &c. The our subject. In the first we are offered a main difficulty for the present is the scantifine climate, extraordinary facilities of car-ness of the population. Excluding the hill riage, and the certainty that the Kuppas country, this is estimated at no more than Mehals (cotton province) of former times twenty-eight to the square mile, and scarceoffer all the physical conditions suitable to ly one-thirtieth of the culturable ground is the growth of what is now so much required supposed to be now occupied. Let us hope in Europe. There are no proprietors to in- that it may be granted to us so to rule these terfere with, and labour is easily obtained fine territories that they may be filled with a from the neighbouring province of Tipperah. prosperous and contented peasan try. Sumbulpore, again, in the valley of the Mahanuddi, is 120 miles long, by 50 to 60 in width. Its soil is fertile, and well suited for many kinds of Bengal crops, oil-seeds, safflower, lac, timber. The land can, it is stated, be obtained on easy terms; the river is navigable for a considerable distance; roads are now under construction; and labour, although scarce, can certainly be secured. Then the Sunderbunds, once certainly populous and cultivated, are now again being partially brought under the power of man. What the future of that great tract may be, it is perhaps useless to attempt to forecast; but it can scarcely be without interest to any one thinking of India as a field for his labour and capital, even though he may fix his hopes more directly on the hops, vines, tea-gardens, and mountain breezes of the Kanawur valley. The best evidence short of demonstration exists to show that parts of the coast line of the Sunderbunds are well suited to the growth of the fine varieties of long-stapled cotton. We do not believe that the question is vitally material to the fate of the cottontrade of India generally, which must turn on other considerations; but it will no doubt exercise considerable influence on the prospects of the Lower Delta itself, as an improvable and reclaimable district. Besides all these, Arracan exports prodigious quantities of rice to Europe, and British Burmah offers advantages of many different kinds, which may fairly compare with those of most parts of India. In the Delta of the Irrawady almost every variety of tropical produce can be raised: the soil is ART. II. — 1. My Diary North and South. 3. 4. Our Whole Country; or, the Past and Present of the United States, Historical and Descriptive; containing General and Local Histories of each of the States, &c.; also Biographical Sketches of Distinguished Persons, &c.; with a large and varied Collection of interesting and valuable Information, &c. Illustrated by 600 engravings. By John Warner Barber, Author of Historical Collections of Connecticut and Massachusetts,' &c.; and Henry Howe, Author of 'Hist. Coll. of Virginia, Ohio, and the Great West.' 2 vols. Cincinnati. London. The National Almanac and Annual Record for the Year 1863. Philadelphia : J. W. Childs. London: Trübner. 5. The South Vindicated. By the Hon. James Williams, late American Minister to Turkey. With an Introduction by John Baker Hopkins. London. Translated by the Author from the Second that have hitherto obstructed the English view of American affairs, and we have selected the passage in question simply as embodying those errors in an unusually concise and dogmatic form. 7. The Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events. Edited by Frank They may be classed briefly thus:-1. As Moore, Author of 'Diary of the Ameri- to the political relations of North, West, can Revolution.' New York. London. and South; 2. As to the latter's firm purpose 8. Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army: to secede in certain contingencies long since being a Narrative of Personal Adventures clearly defined; 3. As to the military and. in the Infantry, Ordnance, Cavalry, Cour other resources of the seceding States; and ier, and Hospital Services; with an Exhi- 4. As to the real relation between master bition of the Power, Purposes, Earnest- and slave, and the bearing of this 'peculiar ness, Military Despotism, and Demorali- institution' on Southern powers of self desation of the South. By an Impressed fence. New Yorker. London. With the first and second of these we do not propose at present to deal. The ques tion now before us is that of military resources; and if, in its examination, a passing glance at the fourth source of error slavery is forced upon us, it will be simply in its bearing upon these. THE Carolinians and Georgians "protest too much." The flame is too sudden and too violent to last long. . . . . . A strongminded President like Jackson would probably not hesitate to put down the Carolinians by force. It is evident, indeed, on the small- There are perhaps few more baffling studest reflection, that the South, even if united, ies than that of contemporary history. The could never resist for three months the great present case, too, presents a special difficulty ly preponderating strength of the North. in the enforced silence of one belligerent, A few hundred slaveowners, trembling night- and the unusually audacious mendacity of ly with visions of murder and pillage, backed the other. It has not been merely the newsby a dissolute population of " poor whites," paper press of the North that has systemare no match for the hardy and resolute atically disregarded truth when a lie might populations of the Free States. The North-gloss over defeat or magnify a doubtful vicerners have hitherto treated the South like a tory. Generals in the field have vied in mispetulant child, and given in to all its ways; representation with the War Department at but if ever the day of conflict should come, it would be shown that the South is but a child in its weakness as well as in its frowardness.' So wrote the 'Times' on the 26th November, 1860. On the 13th December, 1862, the fourth attack upon the Southern capital was hurled back from before the heights of Fredericksburg, and the fourth great army of invasion subjected to the most crushing defeat of a disastrous war. It is not often that the slow march of history presents to us, in so brief a space, so marvellous a change. We purpose now to trace, as fully as our narrow limits will allow, the experience of those two short years in which it has been wrought. home; and Pope's 10,000 prisoners, Grant's We cannot say that we have derived much solid information from Mr. Russell's amusing' Diary,' notwithstanding his activity and the advantages which he enjoyed. Indeed we have been compelled to trust entirely to our own power of collating the various conflicting documents on either side. Among these, Mr. Williams's volume, though abiy and not altogether intemperately written, bears on the question chiefly in its political aspect. The Introduction, however, affords statistical information of considerable value In commencing this article with the passage above quoted, we do not at all attribute - the more so, as being derived almost ento the Times' any special responsibility for tirely from Northern sources. Unfortunatethe delusions it displays. They probably ly, the proof-sheets have hardly been revised represent the opinions of the majority at the with sufficient care, and the oversight has remoment. Nor do we purpose here to spec sulted in more than one apparently arithulate how far, with a people so open to Press metical blunder, in some cases of considerainfluence, and so specially sensitive to the ble importance. Mr. Hudson's 'Second opinion of the Old Country,' such language War of Independence' is also an avowedly may have tended to precipitate the catas-partisan book, and, like the 'South Vinditrophe now so universally deplored. We cated,' deals chiefly with political considerawish but to clear away certain errors of fact tions. |