Departure from Madras. 479 



As a number of our new-found friends expressed a wish, 

 notwithstanding the difficulties of getting out to, and back from 

 the roads, to visit our ship, the commodore invited some forty 

 guests, shortly before our departure, to a " tiffin " on board. 

 Although the frigate rolled pretty heavily, yet we, nevertheless, 

 had the pleasure of the company of some twenty gentlemen 

 and ten ladies. After "tiffin," which was served on the 

 poop, under a tent improvised with flags for the occasion, all felt 

 sufficiently comfortable to try a dance on the quarter-deck, our 

 band of music being called into requisition for quadrilles, polkas, 

 and waltzes ; and, indeed, our guests paid so httle attention to 



"And is not this very city, Madras, where we have been so heartily welcomed, 

 tlie Lest proof of the energy and perseverance of the political and commercial 

 gi-eatness of the British nation? Nothing but English steadiness and English 

 perseverance could succeed to build on tliis barren, inhospitable, and even most 

 perilous coast, a vast, floiuisliing city, rivalling in size and the number of inhabitants 

 the largest capitals in Europe! And what is still more pleasing and satisfactory, 

 is the intellectual and physical condition in which one finds the Indians, especially 

 if compared with the condition of the natives in North and Central America, &c. 

 There he meets a population, rapidly dying away, in proportion as the axe of ci\dli- 

 zation is resounding from the backwoods. One may almost determinate the day 

 when tlie last of the red men will have disappeared from the North American Con- 

 tinent, the land of liis ancestors ! Here in India, on the contrary, the traveller 

 meets with a tluiviug, industrious population. Wlio can see Hindoos, Malabar, 

 Sentus, &c., occupy most unportant employments at the observatory, at the telegi-aph 

 oflices, at the railroad, in any branch almost of tlie public service, and stUl beheve 

 the Hindoo race like tlie Indians of North America to be a doomed people — to 

 be a people that has no future ? No, it has a futm-e, and, under the wise and humane 

 government of the British Crown, I am sure the coloured race of India will even 

 have a most glorious future ! 



" These ai-e the impressions and feelings, gentlemen, with which we part from 

 Madras, with wliich I and my scientific colleagues bid you all a most sincere and 

 heartfelt fai'ewell." 



