dhpur is--let a simile suffice. Sukkur in June would be
Simla to Jodhpur.
The State Engineer, who is also the Jodhpur State Line, for he has no
European subordinates, conceived the idea of bringing the water from the
Balsaman into the city. Was the city grateful? Not in the least. It is
said that the Sahib wanted the water to run uphill and was throwing
money into the tank. Being true Marwaris, men betted on the subject. The
canal--a built out one, for water must not touch earth in these
parts--was made at a cost of something over a lakh, and the water came
down because its source was a trifle higher than the city. Now, in the
hot weather, the women need not go for long walks, but the Marwari
cannot understand how it was that the waters came down to Jodhpur. From
the Marwari to money matters is an easy step. Formerly, that is to say,
up to within a very short time, the Treasury of Jodhpur was conducted in
a shiftless, happy-go-lucky sort of fashion, not uncommon in Native
States, whereby the Mahajuns "held the bag" and made unholy profits on
discount and other things, to the confusion of the Durbar Funds and
their own enrichment. There is now a Treasury modelled on English lines,
and English in the important particular that money is not to be got from
it for the asking, and the items of expenditure are strictly looked
after.
In the middle of all this bustle of reform planned, achieved,
frustrated, and replanned, and the never-ending underground warfare that
surges in a Native State, move the English officers--the irreducible
minimum of exiles. As a caste, the working Englishmen in Native States
are curiously interesting; and the traveller whose tact by this time has
been blunted by tramping, sits in judgment upon them as he has seen
them. In the first place, they are, they must be, the fittest who have
survived; for though, here and there, you shall find one chafing
bitterly against the burden of his life in the wilderness, one to be
pitied more than any chained beast, the bulk of the caste are honestly
and unaffectedly fond of their work, fond of the country around them,
and fond of the people they deal with. In each State their answer to a
question is the same. The men with whom they are in contact are "all
right" when you know them, but you've got to "know them first," as the
music-hall song says. Their hands are full of work; so full that, when
the incult wanderer said: "What do you find to do?" they look upon hi
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