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Climate again is something; but if climate were everything, Anglo-Indians would grow more and more to look like Hindoos, which is far from being the case. Something in the evil spirit of our time forces people always to pretend to have found some material and mechanical explanation.
That superficial fallacy, undoubtedly, alienates the sympathy of many Anglo-Indians from religious and social progress in India. Thrice at least did one of the most distinguished viceroys, when addressing native audiences, advise them to stick to their own beliefs, using these or very similar words.
If, along with that remedy, more Anglo-Indians would take a high view of their mission to India, and of their residence in that country, much of that regrettable bias and bitterness on the part of Indians would surely pass away.
Edward Hamilton Aitken, the author of the following sketches, was well known to the present generation of Anglo-Indians, by his pen-name of Eha, as an accurate and amusing writer on natural history subjects. Those who were privileged to know him intimately, as the writer of this sketch did, knew him as a Christian gentleman of singular simplicity and modesty and great charm of manner.
I am not sure that of all things educational to young men with no personal memory of that time, and especially to young men with no family tradition of it to reflect it in their books and their furniture; and this yet more particularly to young men born out of England yet claiming communion with England, the Anglo-Indians and the Colonials I am not sure, I say, that the thing most educational to these would not be some hundred of Charles Keene's drawings, for therein they would find what it was that gave them the power and the wealth that can hardly be defended unless its traditions are continued.
The temperature is much more equable, and therefore not so trying to weak constitutions. Formerly, many Anglo-Indians visited the north-west coast; but this has not been so much the case latterly. Numbers of tourists come from Australia during the summer months. Compared to the larger island, Tasmania is well watered, and the rainfall is very much greater.
The action of the Indian government, in view of the present situation, has been the subject of criticism. Anglo-Indians feel that the Viceroy and his Council have, for some reason or other, been too deliberate in their action. For two years things have been going from bad to worse.
Anglo-Indians, however, seem to be more tormented by these domestic plagues than any other set of people. The instant a stranger lands upon Asiatic ground, we hear of nothing else.
At present many Dutch children born in India are sent to Holland to be educated, not, as in the case of Anglo-Indians, for the sake of their health, but because there is not a sufficient number of schools in these colonies. Native schools are more numerous, and are being multiplied not only by the Government but by the missionaries.
Whatever weekly review happens at such a moment to contain a reference, however remote, to the theme in question reaps the storm. Gusts of letters come in from all corners of the British Isles. These are presently reinforced by Canada in full blast. A few weeks later the Anglo-Indians weigh in. In due course we have the help of our Australian cousins.
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