d we were all about twelve miles from each other. It
is difficult to conceive the state of isolation in which we lived, and as
we were all Europeanly speaking single handed, and could seldom leave
home, we often had not for weeks together an opportunity of seeing a
single white face, and so rare indeed was a visit from a neighbour that,
when one was coming to see me, I used to sit on a hill watching for the
first glimpse of him, like a shipwrecked mariner on a desert island
watching for the glimpse of a sail on the horizon. As for the Indian
mutinies, which broke out the year after I had started work, they might
have been going on in Norway as far as we were concerned; none of us at
all appreciated the importance and gravity of the events that were
occurring, and one of my neighbours said that it was not worth while
trying to understand the situation, and that we had better wait for the
book that would be sure to come out when things had settled down. And the
native population around us appeared to know as little of the mutinies as
we did. They seemed to be aware that some disturbance was going on
somewhere in the north, and that represented the whole extent of their
knowledge of the subject.

I have described our life as having been one of great isolation so far as
European society was concerned, but I never felt it to be a dull one, nor
did my neighbours ever complain of it, though we only took a holiday of a
few weeks in the year. But we had plenty of work, and big game shooting,
and the occupation was an interesting one, and as I even now return with
pleasure every winter to my planter's life, this proves that my earlier
days must have left behind them many pleasant associations. And the
occupation and sport were really all we had to depend on. We had few
books, nor any means of getting them, for I need hardly say that pioneer
planters, who have to keep themselves and their coffee till the latter
comes into bearing, cannot afford to buy anything that can be dispensed
with. But after all this perhaps was no disadvantage, for, as a great
moral philosopher has pointed out, nothing tends to weaken the resources
of the mind so much as a miscellaneous course of reading unaccompanied (as
it usually is, I may remark) by reflection. The management of people, the
business of an estate, the exercise of the inventive powers, the
cultivation of method, the sharpening of the observing and combining
faculties, which are so well dev