“Spent the day in the bungalow as it was very hot, and at half past 4 o’clock went on to Bombay, after having instructed two of the Mulvis of Kalbarga in my ideas, and gained their support for the university.”
_N.B._--The following is the account given me by an Indian gentleman in whom I have confidence, of the final act of the long official intrigue here described at Hyderabad, which had for its object the permanent retention of the Berar provinces by the Government of India: Twenty years after Lord Ripon’s visit, another viceregal visit was paid to Hyderabad, and the Nizam was pressed by Lord Curzon at the close of an entertainment at the palace to accord him a perpetual lease of the Provinces for the Indian Government, and the Nizam, in deference to his guest, verbally consented. In the morning, however, he would have recalled his promise, and it was only on compulsion, and on threat of deposition, that he signed the treaty laid before him as a binding document by the Resident. The form of a lease was chosen to evade Lord Ripon’s honest assurances at the time of the installation, and there are many precedents for the subterfuge. The Nizam, my informant added, refused for four days to take food after this occurrence.
“Arrived at Bombay at 11 o’clock. I see the ‘Bombay Gazette’ has published the Patna letter, and there is important news from Egypt. Sinkat has fallen to the Mahdi, and Mr. Gladstone has ordered 4,000 English troops to the Red Sea. Next we shall hear that Khartoum has fallen and Gordon has been killed, and then there will be a regular Soudan expedition on the scale of the Abyssinian one. I shall protest against the employment of Indian troops.”
We spent the next few days mostly in the Arab stables with Abd-el-Rahman, Eid el Temini, and other dealers from Nejd, arranging for the taking of horses to England for the intended Arab race at Newmarket. It resulted in our taking back four with us to England.
“_18th Feb._--No letter has come from the Nizam, so I am writing again to get one. They are really the most aggravating people to deal with. A vote of censure is expected in England, and if the Ministry go out of office Lord Ripon will follow, and there will be an end of the university and everything else. Gordon has arrived at Khartoum, and has issued a proclamation announcing the slave trade to be henceforth free. This is in accordance with a conversation I had with him last year, for I remember well his admitting that, in spite of all, he had done more harm than good by his crusade against the traffic. The only point indeed we differed on was as to the necessity of retaining Khartoum for Egypt. I have always been for limiting Egypt to its old frontier at Assouan, and abolishing slavery in Lower Egypt, and encouraging its abolition elsewhere. But the Anti-Slave Trade Association does not want slavery abolished any more than a huntsman wants to abolish foxes. Their livelihood depends too entirely on it.