He, however, turned his strong sense and unbiased view to the
general question of railway communication in India, with the result that
he became a vigorous supporter of the idea of narrow gauge and cheap lines
in the parts of that country outside of the main trunk lines of
traffic."[36]
The influence of Yule, and that of his intimate friends and ultimate
successors in office, Colonels R. Strachey and Dickens, led to the
adoption of the narrow (metre) gauge over a great part of India. Of this
matter more will be said further on; it is sufficient at this stage to
note that it was occupying Yule's thoughts, and that he had already taken
up the position in this question that he thereafter maintained through
life. The office of Consulting Engineer to Government for Railways
ultimately developed into the great Department of Public Works.
As related by Yule, whilst Baker "held this appointment, Lord Dalhousie
was in the habit of making use of his advice in a great variety of matters
connected with Public Works projects and questions, but which had nothing
to do with guaranteed railways, there being at that time no officer
attached to the Government of India, whose proper duty it was to deal with
such questions. In August, 1854, the Government of India sent home to the
Court of Directors a despatch and a series of minutes by the
Governor-General and his Council, in which the constitution of the Public
Works Department as a separate branch of administration, both in the local
governments and the government of India itself, was urged on a detailed
plan."
In this communication Lord Dalhousie stated his desire to appoint Major
Baker to the projected office of Secretary for the Department of Public
Works. In the spring of 1855 these recommendations were carried out by the
creation of the Department, with Baker as Secretary and Yule as Under
Secretary for Public Works.
Meanwhile Yule's services were called to a very different field, but
without his vacating his new appointment, which he was allowed to retain.
Not long after the conclusion of the second Burmese War, the King of Burma
sent a friendly mission to the Governor-General, and in 1855 a return
Embassy was despatched to the Court of Ava, under Colonel Arthur Phayre,
with Henry Yule as Secretary, an appointment the latter owed as much to
Lord Dalhousie's personal wish as to Phayre's good-will. The result of
this employment was Yule's first geographical book, a large volume
entitled Mission to the Court of Ava in 1855, originally printed in
India, but subsequently re-issued in an embellished form at home (see over
leaf). To the end of his life, Yule looked back to this "social progress
up the Irawady, with its many quaint and pleasant memories, as to a bright
and joyous holiday."[37] It was a delight to him to work under Phayre,
whose noble and lovable character he had already learned to appreciate two
years before in Pegu.
