run on the lines of these ruby mines? No, sir!
they manage their own affairs, with no Government
of India to interfere with them.”
A quaint vision, as of a self-willed and imperious
dame, drifted across my eyes, and made me smile in
the face of my downright companion. “ My dear sir,”
I said, “ there will never be a Coolgardie, or a Kimberley,
or a Klondyke in the Indian Empire, and I am afraid
you will not get that fence.”
Nevertheless, the company to all the little people
of the valley is a power; and not the less so, because
it is mysteriously linked with the State, which in all
ages here has been the king, the fountain of all force.-
Of the company’s history a little may here be told.
It began with immense expectations and great hopes.
The rubies that for generations had shed a lustre over
the court of Ava seized the imaginations of investors
in Mark Lane. The application of scientific methods
to the working of mines that had for centuries been
famous would, it was readily believed, increase their
output enormously. The shrewd estimate of Tavernier
might have occasioned some pause in these lively
expectations ; but Tavernier lived in the days of James
I., and in the days of James I. there were, neither
steam-engines nor drills ; and, in short, a new era had
dawned,- and those who were early afoot would profit
by their timeliness a hundred-fold. Accordingly the
shares of the new company were boomed, and there
was competition to possess them. Nor was the
company itself less sanguine. A price of four hundred
THE FLOOD OF THE TAILINGS