aining features of the
Bengal indigo planter's off duty life as depicted by Ali Baba will
have quite disappeared, unless the substitution of sugar planting for
that of indigo now receiving considerable attention in various Bengal,
and more particularly Tirhoot, districts prove a success.

Anyway, the Macdonalds, the Beggs, and the Thomases, names now, as
formerly, prominently identified with the great indigo industry, have
been assured of continual remembrance. So prominent, in fact, has the
Scotch element among planting families always been that it is said
that if any one present at a race, polo, or Christmas week gathering
were to shout out "Mac!" from the verandah of the Tirhoot Club, every
face in the crowd would be simultaneously turned towards the speaker.

The bantering allusion to "Mr. Caird and _The Nineteenth Century_,"
applies to that great authority on many and very varied agricultural
subjects, the late Sir James Caird, who died in 1892. In 1878-79 he
was deputed to India by the Secretary of State as a member of the
Indian Famine Commission called into being by the Strachey Brothers;
the general impressions then formed by a six months' tour through
India being embodied in the series of articles, entitled "Notes by the
Way in India; the Land and the People," which appeared from July to
October, 1879, in _The Nineteenth Century_ magazine, thereafter in
book form in 1883, and in an augmented form as a third edition in
1884.

For a detailed account of a Bengal indigo planter's life, mainly
confined, however, to the processes and surroundings of planting and
manufacture, there is no more valuable record than the late
Colesworthy Grant's well illustrated book, "Rural Life in Bengal,"
which was published in 1860. In that work may be found a drawing of
"Mulnath House," a glorified illustration of the fast disappearing
surroundings of a Lower Bengal planter's residence.

No. 13

THE EURASIAN

In November, 1879, when this "Study in chiaro-oscuro" was published,
renewed attention was being directed to the Eurasian community in
India, mainly by the discussions in all circles aroused by the
publication of the late Archdeacon Baly's Bengal Social Science
Association Paper of May in the same year, which dealt with the
employment, _inter alia_, of Europeans of mixed parentage in India; a
question which still engages the anxious consideration of many Indian
statesmen. Ali Baba's "Study" is not an ill-natur