I have the sole direction and control of nearly four hundred and fifty workmen, including paying them, keeping accounts, drawing plans, and everything. I have to get earth dug for bricks, see the moulds made and watch the progress of them till the kiln is full, get wood for the kiln, and direct the lighting of the same, and finally provide a goat to sacrifice to the demon who is supposed to turn the bricks red! Then I must get bamboos and grass cut for thatching, and string _made_ for the purpose; send about the hills for sand for mortar, and limestone to burn, see it mixed and prepared, and then show the niggers how to use it. Then the whole of the wood-work must be set out and made under one's own eye, and a lump of iron brought from the mine to be wrought (also under one's direction) into nails and screws, before a single door can be set up; and when to all this is added the difficulty of getting hands (I mean in the hills), and the bother of watching the idlest and most cunning race on earth, you may suppose my "unpaid magistracy" is no sinecure. I am not exaggerating or indeed telling half the difficulty, for fear you should think the whole a romance. You will naturally ask how I learnt all these trades. I can only say that you can't be more astonished than I am myself, and can only satisfy you by the theory that "necessity is the mother of invention." I am seldom able to sit down from sunrise to sunset, when I get a hasty dinner, and am then only too glad to sleep off the effects of the day. How I have escaped fever during the last month I cannot think, as it has been terribly hot in the sun, even in the hills, and I have lived in the blaze of it pretty constantly. Colonel Lawrence seems determined I shall have nothing to stop me, for his invariable reply to every question is, "Act on your own judgment;" "Do what you think right;" "I give you _carte blanche_ to act in my name, and draw on my funds," and so forth.
Are you aware of the nature of the institution? It was started, in idea, by Colonel Lawrence some two or three years ago, and a sufficient sum of money for a commencement having been raised, he charged me with the erection of the necessary buildings, and the organization and setting in motion of the great machine which is to regenerate and save from moral and physical degradation, sickness, and death, the children of the British soldiers serving in India. The object is to teach them all things useful, while you give them the advantage of a healthy climate, removed from the evil influence of a barrack-room. The children are to remain in the Asylum until their parents return to England, or till old enough to join the ranks, or be otherwise provided for.