dispassionate observer had foreseen would prove to be the case.
Lieutenant Waghorn, of the Company's Marine, has meanwhile been deputed to Egypt, to probe the question of steam communication, viâ the Isthmus of Suez, between India and England, of which he is the confident advocate. The long trail of smoke from the funnel of the Hugh Lindsay has been seen between Babelmandeb and Suez. The term 'steam mail' is finding its way into the despatches which toil over the tumbling seas by the Cape. Chinamen have been consulted as to the quality of Assam tea, and have expressed very high approval of it. It will be long, thinks the head of the Government, before the depopulated country of Assam will rival China in the production of tea, even if the first difficulties of a first experiment are surmounted. But, in its higher districts, Assam, he tells Sir John Hobhouse, is a promising and healthy Province.
So 1836 and the first half of 1837 pass. 'Macaulay has given us his Penal Code.' Madras is raising disagreeable questions about the attendance of military bands at the religious functions of Indians, which so disturb the gentle temper of the Governor-General as to cause him to underline an emphatic declaration that nothing will move him from the path of religious neutrality. The financial authorities are occupied with the issue of a revised copper currency, and with the provision of funds for meeting the increased salaries of native Civil Judges, in which latter subject the Law Member
