APPENDIX. 823 



twelve and a quarter millions, and this, be it remembered, was 

 only the consvimption of less than one-third of the native popula- 

 tion of India. 



It is astonishing, however, how soon one becomes accustomed 

 to figures, which, at first, perplex the understanding. "When I 

 first landed in India I could hardly believe the reports, which were 

 then fast coming in, of the drowning of ten thousand natives by a 

 tidal wave, which was raised in the Bay of Bengal and had swept 

 over some of the coast islands. Later, however, after I had 

 crossed India and seen the dense mass of population, I had no 

 difficulty in comprehending and believing the official report of the 

 loss of life, which had then reached the enormous number of two 

 hundred and fifteen thousand. And yet this catastrophe, appall- 

 ing as it was ' in magnitude, seemed to be quite overshadowed in 

 the public mind by the famine which was at the time prevailing 

 over a large portion of Southern India. Everywhere the railways 

 were choked with rice and grain trains bound for that jjart of the 

 country, and hundreds of vessels were employed in transporting 

 rice from every point of supply in the East. 



About two centuries ago, enterprising British merchants laid 

 the foundations of British power in India, and shrewd old England, 

 ever taking advantage of circumstances, has steadily pushed for- 

 ward her boundaries, until now her possessions in the East have 

 become, as they were recently termed by an English statesman, 

 the " Greater Britain.'' Had she been as wise in the treatment 

 of her American colonies, it is probable that they would not now 

 have been an independent nation, but the injustice of George the 

 Third lost her the choicest gem in her coronet. Perhaps, how- 

 ever, this circumstance had something to do with changing her 

 colonial policy and strengthening her hold on her other posses- 

 sions. It is a noteworthy fact, that while England was losing 

 America she was gaining India, and the period immediately suc- 

 ceeding our war of the Revolution was the one in which she made 

 the greatest progress there. Up to the mutiny in 1857 English 

 interests in India were represented by the celebrated " East India 

 Company," which, in a century and a half, had grown up from a 

 comparatively small commercial enterprise to be a great govern- 

 ment, maintaining an army of many thousand men, making laws, 



