Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official

Rambles and Recollections of an
Indian Official

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Title: Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official
Author: William Sleeman
Release Date: March 27, 2005 [EBook #15483]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK
RECOLLECTIONS INDIAN OFFICIAL ***

Produced by Philip H Hitchcock

GENERAL SIR W. H SLEEMAN. K.C.B.

RAMBLES AND RECOLLECTIONS OF AN INDIAN OFFICIAL
BY
MAJOR-GENERAL SIR W. H. SLEEMAN, K.C.B.
REVISED ANNOTATED EDITION BY VINCENT A. SMITH M.A.
(DUBL. ET OXON.), M.R.A.S., F.R.N.S., LATE OF THE INDIAN
CIVIL SERVICE, AUTHOR OF 'THE EARLY HISTORY OF INDIA'
'A HISTORY OF FINE ART IN INDIA AND CEYLON'. ETC.
HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON
EDINBURGH GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE
BOMBAY 1915

Transcriber's Note
In producing this e-text the numerous notes have been moved to the
end of their respective chapters and renumbered. The printed 'Additions
and Corrections' have been included in the relevant text.
In the printed edition the spelling of certain words is not always
consistent. This is especially true of the use of diacritical marks on
certain words, even within a single page. This e-text attempts to
reproduce the spellings exactly as used in the printed edition.
The use of italics is shown as italics.

AUTHOR'S DEDICATION
MY DEAR SISTER,
Were any one to ask your countrymen in India what has been their
greatest source of pleasure while there, perhaps nine in ten would say,
the letters which they receive from their sisters at home. These, of all
things, perhaps, tend most to link our affections with home by filling

the landscapes, so dear to our recollections, with ever varying groups of
the family circles, among whom our infancy and our boyhood have
been passed; and among whom we still hope to spend the winter of our
days.
They have a very happy facility in making us familiar with the new
additions made from time to time to the dramatis personae of these
scenes after we quit them, in the character of husbands, wives, children,
or friends; and, while thus contributing so much to our happiness, they
no doubt tend to make us better citizens of the world, and servants of
government, than we should otherwise be, for, in our 'struggles through
life in India', we have all, more or less, an eye to the approbation of
those circles which our kind sisters represent--who may, therefore, be
considered in the exalted light of a valuable species of unpaid
magistracy to the Government of India.
No brother has ever had a kinder or better correspondent than I have
had in you, my dear sister; and it was the consciousness of having left
many of your valued letters unanswered, in the press of official duties,
that made me first think of devoting a part of my leisure to you in these
Rambles and Recollections, while on my way from the banks of the
Nerbudda river to the Himâlaya mountains, in search of health, in the
end of 1835 and beginning of 1836. To what I wrote during that
journey I have now added a few notes, observations, and conversations
with natives, on the subjects which my narrative seemed to embrace;
and the whole will, I hope, interest and amuse you and the other
members of our family; and appear, perchance, not altogether
uninteresting or uninstructive to those who are strangers to us both.
Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that I have nowhere
indulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the recollections, or the
conversations. What I relate on the testimony of others I believe to be
true; and what I relate upon my own you may rely upon as being so.
Had I chosen to write a work of fiction, I might possibly have made it a
good deal more interesting; but I question whether it would have been
so much valued by you, or so useful to others; and these are the objects
I have had in view. The work may, perhaps, tend to make the people of

India better understood by those of my own countrymen whose
destinies are cast among them, and inspire more kindly feelings
towards them. Those parts which, to the general reader, will seem dry
and tedious, may be considered, by the Indian statesman, as the most
useful and important.
The opportunities of observation, which varied employment has given
me, have been such as fall to the lot of few; but, although