Cheap silver advantageous to Mexico. The losses to the Government
and railways which arise from gold payments are, comparatively
speaking, a fixed quantity, while the gain to the people from
cheap silver, produces consequential benefits far beyond reach of
calculation. These remarks equally applicable to India. Wanted, a
Government that can see this.




CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.--PROGRESS IN MYSORE.


As I now turn my thoughts back to the year 1855, when, being then in my
eighteenth year, I sailed for India to seek my fortunes in the jungles of
Mysore, it is difficult to believe that the journey is still the same, or
that India is still the same country on the shores of which I landed so
long ago. But after all, as a matter of fact, the journey is, practically
speaking, not the same, and still less is India the same India which I
knew in 1855. For the route across Egypt, which was then partly by rail,
partly by water, and partly across the desert in transits, the bumping of
which I even now distinctly remember, has been exchanged for the Suez
Canal, and the frequent steamers with their accelerated rate of speed have
altered all the relations of distances, and on landing at Bombay the
traveller of 1855 would now find it difficult to recognize the place. For
then there were the old fort walls and ditches, and narrow streets filled
with a straggling throng of carts and people, while now the fort walls and
ditches no longer exist, and the traveller drives into a city with public