296 ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 



tion of whole tribes — the Kurumbers, for instance, who are 

 the most buoyant creatures — my impressions, after a good 

 part of a lifetime in India, are of a melancholy people. 

 An idea obtains in some quarters that they resent our rule ; 

 but I gathered quite the contrary from men whose judgment 

 was founded on long years of observation. India is too 

 vast to be massed together as a whole. A Parsee merchant, 

 himself a traveller and a thinker, once said to us in the 

 hearing of others besides ourselves, that beneath the sky 

 of Hindustan were myriads of different races, creeds, 

 factions, sects, and castes, who would willingly cut each 

 other's throats were it not for the British Raj, which is the 

 cord that binds together the faggot of India. Despite all 

 that is said to the contrary, loyalty to the protecting hand 

 is a national trait. Worse than not understood, her people 

 are misunderstood. 



In the course of our journeyings, as every one does, we 

 made a host of acquaintances and an innermost handful of 

 friends. I know that in that little group of never-to-be- 

 forgotten faces there are brown ones among the white, and 

 I like to think that characteristics we have learnt either to 

 love or disregard here may still exist when hope shall have 

 become realisation. 



