The Travels of Marco Polo — Volume 1 · Chapter 3Part 3
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During his Indian service, Yule had renewed and continued by letters his suit to Miss White, and persistency prevailing at last, he soon after the conclusion of the Khytul affair applied for leave to go home to be married. He sailed from Bombay in May, 1843, and in September of the same year was married, at Bath, to the gifted and large-hearted woman who, to the end, remained the strongest and happiest influence in his life.[30]
Yule sailed for India with his wife in November 1843. The next two years were employed chiefly in irrigation work, and do not call for special note. They were very happy years, except in the one circumstance that the climate having seriously affected his wife’s health, and she having been brought to death’s door, partly by illness, but still more by the drastic medical treatment of those days, she was imperatively ordered back to England by the doctors, who forbade her return to India.
Having seen her on board ship, Yule returned to duty on the canals. The close of that year, December, 1845, brought some variety to his work, as the outbreak of the first Sikh War called nearly all the canal officers into the field. “They went up to the front by long marches, passing through no stations, and quite unable to obtain any news of what had occurred, though on the 21st December the guns of Ferozshah were distinctly heard in their camp at Pehoa, at a distance of 115 miles south-east from the field, and some days later they came successively on the fields of Moodkee and of Ferozshah itself, with all the recent traces of battle. When the party of irrigation officers reached head-quarters, the arrangements for attacking the Sikh army in its entrenchments at Sobraon were beginning (though suspended till weeks later for the arrival of the tardy siege guns), and the opposed forces were lying in sight of each other.”[31]
Yule’s share in this campaign was limited to the sufficiently arduous task of bridging the Sutlej for the advance of the British army. It is characteristic of the man that for this reason he always abstained from wearing his medal for the Sutlej campaign.
His elder brother, Robert Yule, then in the 16th Lancers, took part in that magnificent charge of his regiment at the battle of Aliwal (Jan. 28, 1846) which the Great Duke is said to have pronounced unsurpassed in history. From particulars gleaned from his brother and others present in the action, Henry Yule prepared a spirited sketch of the episode, which was afterwards published as a coloured lithograph by M‘Lean (Haymarket).
At the close of the war, Yule succeeded his friend Strachey as Executive Engineer of the northern division of the Ganges Canal, with his head-quarters at Roorkee, “the division which, being nearest the hills and crossed by intermittent torrents of great breadth and great volume when in flood, includes the most important and interesting engineering works.”[32]
At Roorkee were the extensive engineering workshops connected with the canal. Yule soon became so accustomed to the din as to be undisturbed by the noise, but the unpunctuality and carelessness of the native workmen sorely tried his patience, of which Nature had endowed him with but a small reserve. Vexed with himself for letting temper so often get the better of him, Yule’s conscientious mind devised a characteristic remedy. Each time that he lost his temper, he transferred a fine of two rupees (then about five shillings) from his right to his left pocket. When about to leave Roorkee, he devoted this accumulation of self-imposed fines to the erection of a sun-dial, to teach the natives the value of time. The late Sir James Caird, who told this legend of Roorkee as he heard it there in 1880, used to add, with a humorous twinkle of his kindly eyes, “It was a very handsome dial.”[33]
From September, 1845, to March, 1847, Yule was much occupied intermittently, in addition to his professional work, by service on a Committee appointed by Government “to investigate the causes of the unhealthiness which has existed at Kurnal, and other portions of the country along the line of the Delhi Canal,” and further, to report “whether an injurious effect on the health of the people of the Doab is, or is not, likely to be produced by the contemplated Ganges Canal.”
“A very elaborate investigation was made by the Committee, directed principally to ascertaining what relation subsisted between certain physical conditions of the different districts, and the liability of their inhabitants to miasmatic fevers.” The principal conclusion of the Committee was, “that in the extensive epidemic of 1843, when Kurnaul suffered so seriously ... the greater part of the evils observed had not been the necessary and unavoidable results of canal irrigation, but were due to interference with the natural drainage of the country, to the saturation of stiff and retentive soils, and to natural disadvantages of site, enhanced by excess of moisture. As regarded the Ganges Canal, they were of opinion that, with due attention to drainage, improvement rather than injury to the general health might be expected to follow the introduction of canal irrigation.”[34] In an unpublished note written about 1889, Yule records his ultimate opinion as follows: “At this day, and after the large experience afforded by the Ganges Canal, I feel sure that a verdict so favourable to the sanitary results of canal irrigation would not be given.” Still the fact remains that the Ganges Canal has been the source of unspeakable blessings to an immense population.
The Second Sikh War saw Yule again with the army in the field, and on 13th Jan. 1849, he was present at the dismal ‘Victory’ of Chillianwallah, of which his most vivid recollection seemed to be the sudden apparition of Henry Lawrence, fresh from London, but still clad in the legendary Afghan cloak.
On the conclusion of the Punjab campaign, Yule, whose health had suffered, took furlough and went home to his wife. For the next three years they resided chiefly in Scotland, though paying occasional visits to the Continent, and about 1850 Yule bought a house in Edinburgh. There he wrote “The African Squadron vindicated” (a pamphlet which was afterwards re-published in French), translated Schiller’s Kampf mit dem Drachen into English verse, delivered Lectures on Fortification at the, now long defunct, Scottish Naval and Military Academy, wrote on Tibet for his friend Blackwood’s Magazine, attended the 1850 Edinburgh Meeting of the British Association, wrote his excellent lines, “On the Loss of the Birkenhead,” and commenced his first serious study of Marco Polo (by whose wondrous tale, however, he had already been captivated as a boy in his father’s library—in Marsden’s edition probably). But the most noteworthy literary result of these happy years was that really fascinating volume, entitled Fortification for Officers of the Army and Students of Military History, a work that has remained unique of its kind. This was published by Blackwood in 1851, and seven years later received the honour of (unauthorised) translation into French. Yule also occupied himself a good deal at this time with the practice of photography, a pursuit to which he never after reverted.
In the spring of 1852, Yule made an interesting little semi-professional tour in company with a brother officer, his accomplished friend, Major R. B. Smith. Beginning with Kelso, “the only one of the Teviotdale Abbeys which I had not as yet seen,” they made their way leisurely through the north of England, examining with impartial care abbeys and cathedrals, factories, brick-yards, foundries, timber-yards, docks, and railway works. On this occasion Yule, contrary to his custom, kept a journal, and a few excerpts may be given here, as affording some notion of his casual talk to those who did not know him.
At Berwick-on-Tweed he notes the old ramparts of the town: “These, erected in Elizabeth’s time, are interesting as being, I believe, the only existing sample in England of the bastioned system of the 16th century.... The outline of the works seems perfect enough, though both earth and stone work are in great disrepair. The bastions are large with obtuse angles, square orillons, and double flanks originally casemated, and most of them crowned with cavaliers.” On the way to Durham, “much amused by the discussions of two passengers, one a smooth-spoken, semi-clerical looking person; the other a brusque well-to-do attorney with a Northumbrian burr. Subject, among others, Protection. The Attorney all for ‘cheap bread’— ‘You wouldn’t rob the poor man of his loaf,’ and so forth. ‘You must go with the stgheam, sir, you must go with the stgheam.’ ‘I never did, Mr. Thompson, and I never will,’ said the other in an oily manner, singularly inconsistent with the sentiment.” At Durham they dined with a dignitary of the Church, and Yule was roasted by being placed with his back to an enormous fire. “Coals are cheap at Durham,” he notes feelingly, adding, “The party we found as heavy as any Edinburgh one. Smith, indeed, evidently has had little experience of really stupid Edinburgh parties, for he had never met with anything approaching to this before.” (Happy Smith!) But thanks to the kindness and hospitality of the astronomer, Mr. Chevalier, and his gifted daughter, they had a delightful visit to beautiful Durham, and came away full of admiration for the (then newly established) University, and its grand locale. They went on to stay with an uncle by marriage of Yule’s, in Yorkshire. At dinner he was asked by his host to explain Foucault’s pendulum experiment. “I endeavoured to explain it somewhat, I hope, to the satisfaction of his doubts, but not at all to that of Mr. G. M., who most resolutely declined to take in any elucidation, coming at last to the conclusion that he entirely differed with me as to what North meant, and that it was useless to argue until we could agree about that!” They went next to Leeds, to visit Kirkstall Abbey, “a mediæval fossil, curiously embedded among the squalid brickwork and chimney stalks of a manufacturing suburb. Having established ourselves at the hotel, we went to deliver a letter to Mr. Hope, the official assignee, a very handsome, aristocratic-looking gentleman, who seemed as much out of place at Leeds as the Abbey.” At Leeds they visited the flax mills of Messrs. Marshall, “a firm noted for the conscientious care they take of their workpeople.... We mounted on the roof of the building, which is covered with grass, and formerly was actually grazed by a few sheep, until the repeated inconvenience of their tumbling through the glass domes put a stop to this.” They next visited some tile and brickworks on land belonging to a friend. “The owner of the tile works, a well-to-do burgher, and the apparent model of a West Riding Radical, received us in rather a dubious way: ‘There are a many people has come and brought introductions, and looked at all my works, and then gone and set up for themselves close by. Now des you mean to say that you be really come all the way from Bengul?’ ‘Yes, indeed we have, and we are going all the way back again, though we didn’t exactly come from there to look at your brickworks.’ ‘Then you’re not in the brick-making line, are you?’ ‘Why we’ve had a good deal to do with making bricks, and may have again; but we’ll engage that if we set up for ourselves, it shall be ten thousand miles from you.’ This seemed in some degree to set his mind at rest....”
“A dismal day, with occasional showers, prevented our seeing Sheffield to advantage. On the whole, however, it is more cheerful and has more of a country-town look than Leeds—a place utterly without beauty of aspect. At Leeds you have vast barrack-like factories, with their usual suburbs of squalid rows of brick cottages, and everywhere the tall spiracles of the steam, which seems the pervading power of the place. Everything there is machinery—the machine is the intelligent agent, it would seem, the man its slave, standing by to tend it and pick up a broken thread now and then. At Sheffield ... you might go through most of the streets without knowing anything of the kind was going on. And steam here, instead of being a ruler, is a drudge, turning a grindstone or rolling out a bar of steel, but all the accuracy and skill of hand is the Man’s. And consequently there was, we thought, a healthier aspect about the men engaged. None of the Rodgers remain who founded the firm in my father’s time. I saw some pairs of his scissors in the show-room still kept under the name of Persian scissors.”[35]
From Sheffield Yule and his friend proceeded to Boston, “where there is the most exquisite church tower I have ever seen,” and thence to Lincoln, Peterborough, and Ely, ending their tour at Cambridge, where Yule spent a few delightful days.
In the autumn the great Duke of Wellington died, and Yule witnessed the historic pageant of his funeral. His furlough was now nearly expired, and early in December he again embarked for India, leaving his wife and only child, of a few weeks old, behind him. Some verses dated “Christmas Day near the Equator,” show how much he felt the separation.
Shortly after his return to Bengal, Yule received orders to proceed to Aracan, and to examine and report upon the passes between Aracan and Burma, as also to improve communications and select suitable sites for fortified posts to hold the same. These orders came to Yule quite unexpectedly late one Saturday evening, but he completed all preparations and started at daybreak on the following Monday, 24th Jan. 1853.
From Calcutta to Khyook Phyoo, Yule proceeded by steamer, and thence up the river in the Tickler gunboat to Krenggyuen. “Our course lay through a wilderness of wooded islands (50 to 200 feet high) and bays, sailing when we could, anchoring when neither wind nor tide served ... slow progress up the river. More and more like the creeks and lagoons of the Niger or a Guiana river rather than anything I looked for in India. The densest tree jungle covers the shore down into the water. For miles no sign of human habitation, but now and then at rare intervals one sees a patch of hillside rudely cleared, with the bare stems of the burnt trees still standing.... Sometimes, too, a dark tunnel-like creek runs back beneath the thick vault of jungle, and from it silently steals out a slim canoe, manned by two or three wild-looking Mugs or Kyens (people of the Hills), driving it rapidly along with their short paddles held vertically, exactly like those of the Red men on the American rivers.”
At the military post of Bokhyong, near Krenggyuen, he notes (5th Feb.) that “Captain Munro, the adjutant, can scarcely believe that I was present at the Duke of Wellington’s funeral, of which he read but a few days ago in the newspapers, and here am I, one of the spectators, a guest in this wild spot among the mountains—2½ months since I left England.”
Yule’s journal of his arduous wanderings in these border wilds is full of interest, but want of space forbids further quotation. From a note on the fly-leaf it appears that from the time of quitting the gun-boat at Krenggyuen to his arrival at Toungoop he covered about 240 miles on foot, and that under immense difficulties, even as to food. He commemorated his tribulations in some cheery humorous verse, but ultimately fell seriously ill of the local fever, aided doubtless by previous exposure and privation. His servants successively fell ill, some died and others had to be sent back, food supplies failed, and the route through those dense forests was uncertain; yet under all difficulties he seems never to have grumbled or lost heart. And when things were nearly at the worst, Yule restored the spirits of his local escort by improvising a wappenshaw, with a Sheffield gardener’s knife, which he happened to have with him, for prize! When at last Yule emerged from the wilds and on 25th March marched into Prome, he was taken for his own ghost! “Found Fraser (of the Engineers) in a rambling phoongyee house, just under the great gilt pagoda. I went up to him announcing myself, and his astonishment was so great that he would scarcely shake hands!” It was on this occasion at Prome that Yule first met his future chief Captain Phayre—“a very young-looking man—very cordial,” a description no less applicable to General Sir Arthur Phayre at the age of seventy!
After some further wanderings, Yule embarked at Sandong, and returned by water, touching at Kyook Phyoo and Akyab, to Calcutta, which he reached on 1st May—his birthday.
The next four months were spent in hard work at Calcutta. In August, Yule received orders to proceed to Singapore, and embarked on the 29th. His duty was to report on the defences of the Straits Settlements, with a view to their improvement. Yule’s recommendations were sanctioned by Government, but his journal bears witness to the prevalence then, as since, of the penny-wise-pound-foolish system in our administration. On all sides he was met by difficulties in obtaining sites for batteries, etc., for which heavy compensation was demanded, when by the exercise of reasonable foresight, the same might have been secured earlier at a nominal price.
Yule’s journal contains a very bright and pleasing picture of Singapore, where he found that the majority of the European population “were evidently, from their tongues, from benorth the Tweed, a circumstance which seems to be true of four-fifths of the Singaporeans. Indeed, if I taught geography, I should be inclined to class Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Singapore together as the four chief towns of Scotland.”
Work on the defences kept Yule in Singapore and its neighbourhood until the end of November, when he embarked for Bengal. On his return to Calcutta, Yule was appointed Deputy Consulting Engineer for Railways at Head-quarters. In this post he had for chief his old friend Baker, who had in 1851 been appointed by the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, Consulting Engineer for Railways to Government. The office owed its existence to the recently initiated great experiment of railway construction under Government guarantee.
The subject was new to Yule, “and therefore called for hard and anxious labour. He, however, turned his strong sense and unbiased view to the general question of railway communication in India, with the result that he became a vigorous supporter of the idea of narrow gauge and cheap lines in the parts of that country outside of the main trunk lines of traffic.”[36]
The influence of Yule, and that of his intimate friends and ultimate successors in office, Colonels R. Strachey and Dickens, led to the adoption of the narrow (metre) gauge over a great part of India. Of this matter more will be said further on; it is sufficient at this stage to note that it was occupying Yule’s thoughts, and that he had already taken up the position in this question that he thereafter maintained through life. The office of Consulting Engineer to Government for Railways ultimately developed into the great Department of Public Works.
As related by Yule, whilst Baker “held this appointment, Lord Dalhousie was in the habit of making use of his advice in a great variety of matters connected with Public Works projects and questions, but which had nothing to do with guaranteed railways, there being at that time no officer attached to the Government of India, whose proper duty it was to deal with such questions. In August, 1854, the Government of India sent home to the Court of Directors a despatch and a series of minutes by the Governor-General and his Council, in which the constitution of the Public Works Department as a separate branch of administration, both in the local governments and the government of India itself, was urged on a detailed plan.”
In this communication Lord Dalhousie stated his desire to appoint Major Baker to the projected office of Secretary for the Department of Public Works. In the spring of 1855 these recommendations were carried out by the creation of the Department, with Baker as Secretary and Yule as Under Secretary for Public Works.
Meanwhile Yule’s services were called to a very different field, but without his vacating his new appointment, which he was allowed to retain. Not long after the conclusion of the second Burmese War, the King of Burma sent a friendly mission to the Governor-General, and in 1855 a return Embassy was despatched to the Court of Ava, under Colonel Arthur Phayre, with Henry Yule as Secretary, an appointment the latter owed as much to Lord Dalhousie’s personal wish as to Phayre’s good-will. The result of this employment was Yule’s first geographical book, a large volume entitled Mission to the Court of Ava in 1855, originally printed in India, but subsequently re-issued in an embellished form at home (see over leaf). To the end of his life, Yule looked back to this “social progress up the Irawady, with its many quaint and pleasant memories, as to a bright and joyous holiday.”[37] It was a delight to him to work under Phayre, whose noble and lovable character he had already learned to appreciate two years before in Pegu. Then, too, Yule has spoken of the intense relief it was to escape from the monotonous scenery and depressing conditions of official life in Bengal (Resort to Simla was the exception, not the rule, in these days!) to the cheerfulness and unconstraint of Burma, with its fine landscapes and merry-hearted population. “It was such a relief to find natives who would laugh at a joke,” he once remarked in the writer’s presence to the lamented E. C. Baber, who replied that he had experienced exactly the same sense of relief in passing from India to China.
Yule’s work on Burma was largely illustrated by his own sketches. One of these represents the King’s reception of the Embassy, and another, the King on his throne. The originals were executed by Yule’s ready pencil, surreptitiously within his cocked hat, during the audience.
From the latter sketch Yule had a small oil-painting executed under his direction by a German artist, then resident in Calcutta, which he gave to Lord Dalhousie.[38]
The Government of India marked their approval of the Embassy by an unusual concession. Each of the members of the mission received a souvenir of the expedition. To Yule was given a very beautiful and elaborately chased small bowl, of nearly pure gold, bearing the signs of the Zodiac in relief.[39]
On his return to Calcutta, Yule threw himself heart and soul into the work of his new appointment in the Public Works Department. The nature of his work, the novelty and variety of the projects and problems with which this new branch of the service had to deal, brought Yule into constant, and eventually very intimate association with Lord Dalhousie, whom he accompanied on some of his tours of inspection. The two men thoroughly appreciated each other, and, from first to last, Yule experienced the greatest kindness from Lord Dalhousie. In this intimacy, no doubt the fact of being what French soldiers call pays added something to the warmth of their mutual regard: their forefathers came from the same airt, and neither was unmindful of the circumstance. It is much to be regretted that Yule preserved no sketch of Lord Dalhousie, nor written record of his intercourse with him, but the following lines show some part of what he thought:
“At this time [1849] there appears upon the scene that vigorous and masterful spirit, whose arrival to take up the government of India had been greeted by events so inauspicious. No doubt from the beginning the Governor-General was desirous to let it be understood that although new to India he was, and meant to be, master; ... Lord Dalhousie was by no means averse to frank dissent, provided in the manner it was never forgotten that he was Governor-General. Like his great predecessor Lord Wellesley, he was jealous of all familiarity and resented it.... The general sentiment of those who worked under that ἄναξ ανδρῶν was one of strong and admiring affection ... and we doubt if a Governor-General ever embarked on the Hoogly amid deeper feeling than attended him who, shattered by sorrow and physical suffering, but erect and undaunted, quitted Calcutta on the 6th March 1856.”[40]
His successor was Lord Canning, whose confidence in Yule and personal regard for him became as marked as his predecessor’s.
In the autumn of 1856, Yule took leave and came home. Much of his time while in England was occupied with making arrangements for the production of an improved edition of his book on Burma, which so far had been a mere government report. These were completed to his satisfaction, and on the eve of returning to India, he wrote to his publishers[41] that the correction of the proof sheets and general supervision of the publication had been undertaken by his friend the Rev. W. D. Maclagan, formerly an officer of the Madras army (and now Archbishop of York).
Whilst in England, Yule had renewed his intimacy with his old friend Colonel Robert Napier, then also on furlough, a visitor whose kindly sympathetic presence always brought special pleasure also to Yule’s wife and child. One result of this intercourse was that the friends decided to return together to India. Accordingly they sailed from Marseilles towards the end of April, and at Aden were met by the astounding news of the outbreak of the Mutiny.
On his arrival in Calcutta Yule, who retained his appointment of Under Secretary to Government, found his work indefinitely increased. Every available officer was called into the field, and Yule’s principal centre of activity was shifted to the great fortress of Allahabad, forming the principal base of operations against the rebels. Not only had he to strengthen or create defences at Allahabad and elsewhere, but on Yule devolved the principal burden of improvising accommodation for the European troops then pouring into India, which ultimately meant providing for an army of 100,000 men. His task was made the more difficult by the long-standing chronic friction, then and long after, existing between the officers of the Queen’s and the Company’s services. But in a far more important matter he was always fortunate. As he subsequently recorded in a Note for Government: “Through all consciousness of mistakes and shortcomings, I have felt that I had the confidence of those whom I served, a feeling which has lightened many a weight.”
It was at Allahabad that Yule, in the intervals of more serious work, put the last touches to his Burma book. The preface of the English edition is dated, “Fortress of Allahabad, Oct. 3, 1857,” and contains a passage instinct with the emotions of the time. After recalling the “joyous holiday” on the Irawady, he goes on: “But for ourselves, standing here on the margin of these rivers, which a few weeks ago were red with the blood of our murdered brothers and sisters, and straining the ear to catch the echo of our avenging artillery, it is difficult to turn the mind to what seem dreams of past days of peace and security; and memory itself grows dim in the attempt to repass the gulf which the last few months has interposed between the present and the time to which this narrative refers.”[42]
When he wrote these lines, the first relief had just taken place, and the second defence of Lucknow was beginning. The end of the month saw Sir Colin Campbell’s advance to the second—the real—relief of Lucknow. Of Sir Colin, Yule wrote and spoke with warm regard: “Sir Colin was delightful, and when in a good humour and at his best, always reminded me very much, both in manner and talk, of the General (i.e. General White, his wife’s father). The voice was just the same and the quiet gentle manner, with its underlying keen dry humour. But then if you did happen to offend Sir Colin, it was like treading on crackers, which was not our General’s way.”
When Lucknow had been relieved, besieged, reduced, and finally remodelled by the grand Roads and Demolitions Scheme of his friend Napier, the latter came down to Allahabad, and he and Yule sought diversion in playing quoits and skittles, the only occasion on which either of them is known to have evinced any liking for games.
Before this time Yule had succeeded his friend Baker as de facto Secretary to Government for Public Works, and on Baker’s retirement in 1858, Yule was formally appointed his successor.[43] Baker and Yule had, throughout their association, worked in perfect unison, and the very differences in their characters enhanced the value of their co-operation; the special qualities of each friend mutually strengthened and completed each other. Yule’s was by far the more original and creative mind, Baker’s the more precise and, at least in a professional sense, the more highly-trained organ. In chivalrous sense of honour, devotion to duty, and natural generosity, the men stood equal; but while Yule was by nature impatient and irritable, and liable, until long past middle age, to occasional sudden bursts of uncontrollable anger, generally followed by periods of black depression and almost absolute silence,[44] Baker was the very reverse. Partly by natural temperament, but also certainly by severe self-discipline, his manner was invincibly placid and his temper imperturbable.[45] Yet none was more tenacious in maintaining whatever he judged right.