The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 / Page 44 (Color Image)

0044	The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1

XXXV1 MEMOIR OF SIR HENRY YULE 1843-47.

streaming in the wind. He always dwells in my memory as a

sort of pythoness on her tripod under the afflatus." 20

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, re-

mained the strongest and happiest influence in his life.3o

Yule sailed for India with his wife in November 1843. The

next two years ;vere 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

Yule's share in this campaign was limited to the sufficiently

arduous task of bridging the Sutlej for the advance of the

British army. It is characteristic of the man that for this

29 Note by Yule, communicated by him to Mr R. B. Smith and printed by the latter in Life of Lord Lawrence.

30 And when nearing his own end, it was to her that his thoughts turned most constantly.

31 Yule and Maelagan's Memoir of Sir W. Baker,

•

National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books