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INDIA

again are distinguished no less for loyalty than for the
enormous antiquity of their ruling dynasties (these are
the Rajput states), but all of them are developing rapidly
and changing the old order under the gradually increasing
influence of that European civilisation which is ever
expanding around the hill-stations of Northern India.
In the absence of settled colonies of Englishmen these
Himalayan hill-stations, centres of European life and interest,
 exercise a most important function in the gradual
process of social development. But for them the conditions
 of modern European life in India would be

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almost intolerable. It is the increasing facility with which
the overworked official, with damaged health and tired
brain, enervated by daily official routine in the stifling atmosphere
 of the civil law courts, or worn out by those
bodily derangements which are inseparable from the experience
 of duties performed in the heat of an Indian
summer, can speed to the hills and recoup his strength in
a pure atmosphere and a comparatively cool climate, that
keeps the great machinery of government in working order,
and prevents the dislocation that would inevitably follow
on a constant change of administration. But for the hillstations
 of India an Indian career would imply a continuous