From A Note On The
Fly-Leaf It Appears That From The Time Of Quitting The Gun-Boat At
Krenggyuen To His Arrival At Toungoop He Covered About 240 Miles On Foot,
And That Under Immense Difficulties, Even As To Food.
He commemorated his
tribulations in some cheery humorous verse, but ultimately fell seriously
ill of the local fever, aided doubtless by previous exposure and
privation.
His servants successively fell ill, some died and others had to
be sent back, food supplies failed, and the route through those dense
forests was uncertain; yet under all difficulties he seems never to have
grumbled or lost heart. And when things were nearly at the worst, Yule
restored the spirits of his local escort by improvising a wappenshaw, with
a Sheffield gardener's knife, which he happened to have with him, for
prize! When at last Yule emerged from the wilds and on 25th March marched
into Prome, he was taken for his own ghost! "Found Fraser (of the
Engineers) in a rambling phoongyee house, just under the great gilt
pagoda. I went up to him announcing myself, and his astonishment was so
great that he would scarcely shake hands!" It was on this occasion at
Prome that Yule first met his future chief Captain Phayre - "a very
young-looking man - very cordial," a description no less applicable to
General Sir Arthur Phayre at the age of seventy!
After some further wanderings, Yule embarked at Sandong, and returned by
water, touching at Kyook Phyoo and Akyab, to Calcutta, which he reached on
1st May - his birthday.
The next four months were spent in hard work at Calcutta. In August, Yule
received orders to proceed to Singapore, and embarked on the 29th. His
duty was to report on the defences of the Straits Settlements, with a view
to their improvement. Yule's recommendations were sanctioned by
Government, but his journal bears witness to the prevalence then, as
since, of the penny-wise-pound-foolish system in our administration. On
all sides he was met by difficulties in obtaining sites for batteries,
etc., for which heavy compensation was demanded, when by the exercise of
reasonable foresight, the same might have been secured earlier at a
nominal price.
Yule's journal contains a very bright and pleasing picture of Singapore,
where he found that the majority of the European population "were
evidently, from their tongues, from benorth the Tweed, a circumstance
which seems to be true of four-fifths of the Singaporeans. Indeed, if I
taught geography, I should be inclined to class Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Dundee, and Singapore together as the four chief towns of Scotland."
Work on the defences kept Yule in Singapore and its neighbourhood until
the end of November, when he embarked for Bengal. On his return to
Calcutta, Yule was appointed Deputy Consulting Engineer for Railways at
Head-quarters. In this post he had for chief his old friend Baker, who had
in 1851 been appointed by the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, Consulting
Engineer for Railways to Government.
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