After an assistant has been about a year at a district station, and when he has passed certain examinations with which the Government still persists in unnecessarily tormenting its junior servants, he is usually sent to what is called a sub-division of the district. The inventor of sub-divisions was undoubtedly an enemy to his brethren. To be in charge of a sub-division means, in most cases, that the assistant is cut off from all communication with his fellow-Englishmen. He is undoubtedly monarch of all he surveys, but his realms are rather pitiful. He has an official dwelling, usually much out of repair; sometimes it is only a mat and thatched building, but too frequently one part of the building serves as a dwelling-house, and the other part serves as the public office, so that privacy or quiet is almost unattainable. Within a few yards of the dwelling-house the lock-up of the prisoners under trial or under sentence presents itself, with a guard-house for the police detachment. A small tank or pond, in which the prisoners and their guard bathe, also serves to supply the assistant and his domestics with water. There may be some half-cultivated scrap of garden, and sometimes there is actually a bit of road along which a wheeled vehicle can be driven, at least as far as the broken bridge, for the repair of which the estimates have been several months under consideration before some superior officer. The reader may imagine the feelings of the young official on finding himself in charge of such a kingdom as this. There is not another white face to be seen. If he falls ill, there is a half-trained native doctor to attend to him. His nearest white neighbour is probably an indigo-planter, with whom he may not be on good terms, as he may have decided cases adversely to the planter’s interests. Meanwhile his official duties are not only onerous but irksome. He is expected to be a jack-of-all-trades. He has complicated criminal cases before him in his magisterial capacity. The native lawyers who practise in his court are usually men of inferior quality, who have not succeeded in their business at the chief station of the district. The native officers who belong to his court are ill-paid, and too often inefficient. They have at the best a very limited experience, and are not qualified to supply the assistant’s own want of experience. He has to look after his treasury, and to send in all sorts of accounts to the head-quarters of the district. There is hardly a sub-division in which the accounts are kept correctly. In too many there are embezzlements or some fraudulent practices which the assistant fails to detect until he has become in a measure responsible for them, so that when he discovers them he has practically to report evil of himself. His work is carried on for many hours in a crowded room, in a hot and reeking atmosphere. Just as he hopes that his daily labours are coming to an end, there