It "Was A Strange Scene Of Confusion - All The Paraphernalia And
Accumulation Of Odds And Ends Of A Wealthy Native Family Lying About And
Inviting Loot.
I remember one beautiful crutch-stick of ebony with two
rams' heads in jade.
I took it and sent it in to the political authority,
intending to buy it when sold. There was a sale, but my stick never
appeared. Somebody had a more developed taste in jade.... Amid the general
rummage that was going on, an officer of British Infantry had been put
over a part of the palace supposed to contain treasure, and they - officers
and all - were helping themselves. Henry Lawrence was one of the politicals
under George Clerk. When the news of this affair came to him I was
present. It was in a white marble loggia in the palace, where was a white
marble chair or throne on a basement. Lawrence was sitting on this throne
in great excitement. He wore an Afghan choga, a sort of dressing-gown
garment, and this, and his thin locks, and thin beard were streaming in
the wind. He always dwells in my memory as a sort of pythoness on her
tripod under the afflatus."[29]
During his Indian service, Yule had renewed and continued by letters his
suit to Miss White, and persistency prevailing at last, he soon after the
conclusion of the Khytul affair applied for leave to go home to be
married. He sailed from Bombay in May, 1843, and in September of the same
year was married, at Bath, to the gifted and large-hearted woman who, to
the end, remained the strongest and happiest influence in his life.[30]
Yule sailed for India with his wife in November 1843. The next two years
were employed chiefly in irrigation work, and do not call for special
note. They were very happy years, except in the one circumstance that the
climate having seriously affected his wife's health, and she having been
brought to death's door, partly by illness, but still more by the drastic
medical treatment of those days, she was imperatively ordered back to
England by the doctors, who forbade her return to India.
Having seen her on board ship, Yule returned to duty on the canals. The
close of that year, December, 1845, brought some variety to his work, as
the outbreak of the first Sikh War called nearly all the canal officers
into the field. "They went up to the front by long marches, passing
through no stations, and quite unable to obtain any news of what had
occurred, though on the 21st December the guns of Ferozshah were
distinctly heard in their camp at Pehoa, at a distance of 115 miles
south-east from the field, and some days later they came successively on
the fields of Moodkee and of Ferozshah itself, with all the recent traces
of battle. When the party of irrigation officers reached head-quarters, the
arrangements for attacking the Sikh army in its entrenchments at Sobraon
were beginning (though suspended till weeks later for the arrival of the
tardy siege guns), and the opposed forces were lying in sight of each
other."[31]
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