when the Anglo-Indians and their families inhaled the breeze at eventide.
Although James Thomason found India almost an empire and died leaving it fully such, yet during his thirty-one years' service he saw changes of magnitude. When he arrived, India was indeed mainly British, with one large exception, and that consisted of the entire basin of the Indus and its tributaries, which was still in Native hands. But in his time the upper part of this region, the Punjab, and the lower part or Sind, were both conquered and annexed. One war, that of Afghánistán, was indeed waged with chequered fortunes. But of it nothing was actually seen within India itself. Some lesser wars occurred there and on the coast of Burma, but these did not seriously agitate the empire. Apart from the warlike work in the country of the Indus, the operations in India were essentially of a peaceful and progressive character, suitable to James Thomason's taste and genius. He saw the British government relieved of the pressure from arms, politics, self-defence, unavoidable aggrandizement, then using its leisure and freedom for attending to works of peace, and arousing itself to a sense of the responsibilities it had undertaken. He noticed how the government, feeling itself the undisputed master, would dare to deal with evils, or to undertake reforms, that were beyond its power in the days when British ascendency was struggling with many competitors. Thus he witnessed inhuman
