ivilians vegetate on large salaries, to do the work of the rajah,
who is still more highly paid not to interfere. He lives magnificently
in his palace, and they live magnificently in theirs. We arrived at a
small rest-house at night, where we had the satisfaction of eating a fowl
in cutlets an hour after it had been enjoying the sweets of life.

There is a considerable amount of enjoyment in suddenly coming to hills
after you have for a long time seen nothing but flat country--in first
toiling up one and then bowling down the other side, at the imminent
peril of the coolies' necks--in seeing streams when you have seen nothing
but wells--in coming amidst wood and water and diversified scenery, when
every mile that you have travelled for a week past has been the same as
the last. Such were our feelings as we woke at daylight one morning in
the midst of the Rajmahal hills.

There were a good many carts passing with coal from the Burdwan
coal-mines; moreover, we saw sticks, and from the top of each fluttered a
little white flag, suggestive of a railway, whereby our present mode of
conveyance would be knocked on the head, and all the poor coolies who
were pushing us along would be put out of employ. Notwithstanding the
disastrous results which must accrue, a railway is really contemplated;
but I have heard doubts thrown out as to the present line being the best
that could be obtained. It is urged that it has to contend against water
carriage--that, with the exception of the Burdwan mines, the coal of
which is of an inferior quality, there is no mineral produce--that
immense tracts of country through which it passes are totally
uncultivated, and from a want of water will in all probability remain
so--and it has been calculated that, even if the whole traffic at present
passing along the great trunk road of Bengal was to become quadrupled,
and if all the Bengal civilians were to travel up and down every day, and
various rajahs to take express trains once a week, it would not pay: all
these things being considered, were it not that its merits and demerits
have been maturely considered by wiser, or at least better-informed men
than the passing travellers, one might have been inclined to think that
those who expressed doubts regarding its success had some good foundation
for them.

However, it is better to have a railway on a doubtful line than none at
all; the shareholders are guaranteed 5 per cent., and the Government is