f aspect. At
Leeds you have vast barrack-like factories, with their usual suburbs of
squalid rows of brick cottages, and everywhere the tall spiracles of the
steam, which seems the pervading power of the place. Everything there is
machinery--the machine is the intelligent agent, it would seem, the man
its slave, standing by to tend it and pick up a broken thread now and
then. At Sheffield ... you might go through most of the streets without
knowing anything of the kind was going on. And steam here, instead of
being a ruler, is a drudge, turning a grindstone or rolling out a bar of
steel, but all the accuracy and skill of hand is the Man's. And
consequently there was, we thought, a healthier aspect about the men
engaged. None of the Rodgers remain who founded the firm in my father's
time. I saw some pairs of his scissors in the show-room still kept under
the name of _Persian_ scissors."[35]

From Sheffield Yule and his friend proceeded to Boston, "where there is
the most exquisite church tower I have ever seen," and thence to Lincoln,
Peterborough, and Ely, ending their tour at Cambridge, where Yule spent
a few delightful days.

In the autumn the great Duke of Wellington died, and Yule witnessed the
historic pageant of his funeral. His furlough was now nearly expired, and
early in December he again embarked for India, leaving his wife and only
child, of a few weeks old, behind him. Some verses dated "Christmas Day
near the Equator," show how much he felt the separation.

Shortly after his return to Bengal, Yule received orders to proceed to
Aracan, and to examine and report upon the passes between Aracan and
Burma, as also to improve communications and select suitable sites for
fortified posts to hold the same. These orders came to Yule quite
unexpectedly late one Saturday evening, but he completed all preparations
and started at daybreak on the following Monday, 24th Jan. 1853.

From Calcutta to Khyook Phyoo, Yule proceeded by steamer, and thence up
the river in the _Tickler_ gunboat to Krenggyuen. "Our course lay through
a wilderness of wooded islands (50 to 200 feet high) and bays, sailing
when we could, anchoring when neither wind nor tide served ... slow
progress up the river. More and more like the creeks and lagoons of the
Niger or a Guiana river rather than anything I looked for in India. The
densest tree jungle covers the shore down into the water. For miles no
sign of human habitation, but now and then at ra