s. I am convinced that a frank and
unconstrained intercourse between Europeans and natives would create
no jealousy and antagonism, but would lead to the development of a
country singularly blessed by nature, and open a wide field for
Anglo-Saxon energy and enterprise. It does seem strange, with all our
vast territory of Hindustan accurately mapped out and known, roads and
railways, canals and embankments, intersecting it in all directions,
that this interesting corner of the globe, lying contiguous to our
territory for hundreds of miles, should be less known than the
interior of Africa, or the barren solitudes of the ice-bound Arctic
regions.

In these rich valleys hundreds of miles of the finest and most fertile
lands in Asia lie covered by dense jungle, waiting for labour and
capital. For the present we have enough to do in our own possessions
to reclaim the uncultured wastes; but considering the rapid increase
of population, the avidity with which land is taken up, the daily
increasing use of all modern labour-saving appliances, the time must
very shortly come when capital and energy will need new outlets, and
one of the most promising of these is in Nepaul. The rapid changes
which have come over the face of rural India, especially in these
border districts, within the last twenty years, might well make the
most thoughtless pause. Land has increased in value more than
two-fold. The price of labour and of produce has kept more than equal
pace. Machinery is whirring and clanking, where a few years ago a
steam whistle would have startled the natives out of their wits. With
cheap, easy, and rapid communication, a journey to any of the great
cities is now thought no more of than a trip to a distant village in
the same district was thought of twenty years ago. Everywhere are the
signs of progress. New industries are opening up. Jungle is fast
disappearing. Agriculture has wonderfully improved; and wherever an
indigo factory has been built, progress has taken the place of
stagnation, industry and thrift that of listless indolence and
shiftless apathy. A spirit has moved in the valley of dry bones, and
has clothed with living flesh the gaunt skeletons produced by
ignorance, disease, and want. The energy and intelligence of the
planter has breathed on the stagnant waters of the Hindoo intellect
the breath of life, and the living tide is heaving, full of activity,
purging by its resistless ever-moving pulsations the formerly