Captain Basil Hall - Travels in India, Ceylon and Borneo

THE BROADWAY TRAVELLERS

THE BROADWAY TRA VELLERS

In 26 Volumes

TRAVELS IN INDIA,
CEYLON AND BORNEO

BASIL HALL

First published 1931 by
RoutledgeCurzon
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Travels in India, Ceylon and Borneo
ISBN 0-415-34485-9
ISBN 978-0-415-34485-2 (hbk)

The Broadway Travellers

THE BROADWAY TRAVELLERS

EDITED BY SIR E. DENISON ROSS
AND EILEEN POWER

CAPTAIN BASIL HALL

R.N., F.R.S.

TRAVELS IN INDIA
CEYLON AND BORNEO

PROFESSOR H. G. RAWLINSON

Indian Educational Service

Published by
GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
BROADWAY HOUSE, CARTER LANE, LONDON

First published in this Series in 1931

PRINTED IN GUERNSEY, C.I., BRITISH ISLES,
BY THE STAR AND GAZETTE COMPANY LTD.

Captain Basil Halls Fragments of Voyages and Travels originally appeared in nine volumes. They are of a most miscellaneous character, dealing with almost every conceivable topic bearing upon life at sea, arranged with little idea of order. As it was impossible to reprint the whole of the work in this series, it was decided to select what appeared to be most entertaining portion,the authors experiences in India, Ceylon and Borneo. The present work, therefore, comprises chapters I, VI, and VII of Volume II of the Second Series, and Volume II of the Third Series of the Fragments.

CHAPTER

CAPTAIN BASIL HALL, R.N., the subject of this memoir, was the second son of Sir James Hall, Fourth Baronet of Dunglass, Haddingtonshire, [17611832], The house in which he was born was built on the site of an ancient castle on the Berwick Burn, a stream which witnessed many border skirmishes between English and Scots in the old days. It is a spot pregnant with historic memories. It was the last place in Scotland at which a Scottish king slept, for here James IV passed his last night before crossing the Border to become James I of England. It was the Ravens-wood of Sir Walter Scott's famous novel, and is described by Robert Burns as one of the most beautiful places he ever saw. Sir James was a remarkable man. Educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, he afterwards went over to Brienne to stay with a relation, William Hamilton of Bangour. He attended classes at the Military School, and here he met Napoleon Buonaparte, also a pupil there, and was the first Englishman Napoleon ever saw. He held advanced opinions, and in 1791 crossed over to Paris to study the French Revolution, where he came into contact with Robespierre, the Abb Sieys, Condorcet, and the famous chemist Lavoisier, with whom he found much in common. Cockburn, in his Memorials, speaks of Sir James as being the most scientific of our country gentlemen, held in great admiration by all deep philosophers, and describes his house in George Street as, distinguished by its hospitality both to science and fashion.

Early in life he turned his attention to geology; he was the first scientist to test geological hypotheses by practical experiments in the laboratory. From geology he passed on to the study of Gothic architecture, where he anticipated Ruskin by endeavouring to shew that all Gothic architectural forms were derived from simple wattle-buildings, the arch from flexible poles tied together, crockets from sprouting buds on willow-staves and so forth. Basil Hall, when travelling in the Mysore jungles, found an apt illustration of his father's theories in the graceful avenues of overarching bamboos. It seemed, he said, as if I were travelling amid the clustered column of some enormous and enchanted Gothic cathedral, compared to which, the Minster of York, or the cathedral at Winchester, would have seemed mere baby-houses.1 He sat for some years in the House of Commons. Sir James Hall had, by his marriage with Helen, daughter of the Earl of Selkirk, three sons and three daughters. The boys inherited their father's talents. John, the eldest was F.R.S. James, the second, the friend of Sir David Wilkie and Sir Walter Scott, was a well-known painter of portraits and Scottish scenery. Basil, born December 31, 1788, was the most gifted of the trio. He came into the world, he tells us, on a night of violent storm. The tempest, he thinks, got into his blood; long before I shipped a pair of trousers, I felt that a salt-water destiny was to be mine. He derived little benefit from his education at Edinburgh High School, where the tawse, the Scotch counterpart for the birch, was chiefly relied upon for the inculcation of knowledge. He read, however, a good deal in his own way, though he spent the term in counting the days until the time would arrive when he would once more find himself at sunrise in a fishing boat, half a league from the coast, surrounded by congenial spirits, fellows who had no idea of grammar. The joyous excitement of this prospect placed the dull drudgery of syntax in sad contrast, When not spending the night in fishing-boatsoften, as he confesses, violently sea-sick!the boy was roaming about the rock-bound cliffs at Dunglass, dreaming as he gazed on Fast Castle, [the Wolfs Crag of the Waverley Novels] and all the panorama of sea and sky and multi-coloured sails of that romantic coast. Not infrequently his dreams were rudely disturbed by scenes of real tragedy: wrecks upon that cruel shore, not yet lighted by the genius of the elder Stevenson, were then terribly frequent.1 About this time he read Shakespeare, chiefly, he owns, because the