Asia -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Mongols -- History; Polo, Marco, 1254-1323?; Voyages and travels
In reference to Yule’s services in the period following the Mutiny,
Lord Canning’s subsequent Minute of 1862 may here be fitly quoted. In
this the Governor-General writes: “I have long ago recorded my opinion
of the value of his services in 1858 and 1859, when with a crippled
and overtaxed staff of Engineer officers, many of them young and
inexperienced, the G.-G. had to provide rapidly for the accommodation
of a vast English army, often in districts hitherto little known, and
in which the authority of the Government was barely established, and
always under circumstances of difficulty and urgency. I desire to
repeat that the Queen’s army in India was then greatly indebted to
Lieut.-Colonel Yule’s judgment, earnestness, and ability; and this to
an extent very imperfectly understood by many of the officers who held
commands in that army.
“Of the manner in which the more usual duties of his office have
been discharged it is unnecessary for me to speak. It is, I believe,
known and appreciated as well by the Home Government as by the
Governor-General in Council.”
In the spring of 1859 Yule felt the urgent need of a rest, and took
the, at that time, most unusual step of coming home on three months’
leave, which as the voyage then occupied a month each way, left him
only one month at home. He was accompanied by his elder brother George,
who had not been out of India for thirty years. The visit home of the
two brothers was as bright and pleasant as it was brief, but does not
call for further notice.
In 1860, Yule’s health having again suffered, he took short leave to
Java. His journal of this tour is very interesting, but space does
not admit of quotation here. He embodied some of the results of his
observations in a lecture he delivered on his return to Calcutta.
During these latter years of his service in India, Yule owed much
happiness to the appreciative friendship of Lord Canning and the ready
sympathy of Lady Canning. If he shared their tours in an official
capacity, the intercourse was much more than official. The noble
character of Lady Canning won from Yule such wholehearted chivalrous
devotion as, probably, he felt for no other friend save, perhaps in
after days, Sir Bartle Frere. And when her health failed, it was to
Yule’s special care that Lord Canning entrusted his wife during a tour
in the Hills. Lady Canning was known to be very homesick, and one day
as the party came in sight of some ilexes (the evergreen oak), Yule
sought to cheer her by calling out pleasantly: “Look, Lady Canning!
There are _oaks_!” “No, no, Yule, _not_ oaks,” cried Sir C. B. “They
are (solemnly) IBEXES.” “No, _not_ Ibexes, Sir C., you mean SILEXES,”
cried Capt. ——, the A.D.C.; Lady Canning and Yule the while almost
choking with laughter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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