ey-headed; our man is probably
about five-and-twenty. He is called Ramaswamy, and has a
chocolate-coloured moon-face with big round eyes; I think he is
intelligent though he looks stupid. He is dressed in spotless white, his
garments consisting of a short jacket and a dhoti, and he wears a large
round turban on his head, and a pair of neat little gold ear-rings in
his ears. It is a very difficult thing to get a really trustworthy boy,
but the Madrassees are the best, and Ramaswamy comes from the Madras
country far south; he has been in service with a man I know for two
years, and as he is only lent to us for this trip he will probably
behave himself. He is piling up our bedding in a corner of the carriage,
and later on when the train stops at a station for a few minutes he will
come to spread it out. It seems funny to have to carry bedding with us
on a journey, but it is very necessary here. We have pillows and rugs
and a couple of _rezai_ each. These are rather like eider-down quilts,
but are stuffed with cotton instead of down, so they are heavier, and
very comfortable they are to lie upon when doubled up.

You remarked on the amount of luggage we seem to be taking in the
carriage, it is a simple nothing to what is the custom here; look at all
that being piled into the next compartment! Besides masses of bedding
there is a deck-chair, a typewriter, a case for a topee, or helmet, a
gun-case, two portmanteaus, and a box of books, as well as a
lunch-basket. The owner, a pleasant-looking, sun-browned Englishman,
stands by giving orders to his native servants in Hindustanee, which is
a language spoken by the English people to the natives and understood
pretty nearly everywhere. That man is almost certainly what is here
known as a "civilian," that is to say, one of the men in the Indian
Civil Service who govern India. They have to pass stiff examinations at
home, and then come out here for a number of years to do all the work of
government, being magistrates, judges, rulers, and general protectors of
the native, giving up their lives to the country, and dealing out
justice to all men. Some men have not the habit of command, but if it is
in them at all it comes out here, where one white man alone in a
district running to hundreds of miles often has everything in his own
hands; he has to make decisions in an instant of emergency, and stand
by them, compel evildoers to behave, save the miserable low-caste
natives, ground down