Hindquarters

“ A shameless new quarter suddenly obtruded itself with an ugly emphasis; unclassifiables, male and female, began to assert and disport themselves more daringly than dreamt of heretofore; and many good citizens who would crowd the town forward to a population of a million and to a status undeniably metropolitan came to stroll these tawdry, noisy new streets with a curiosity of mind at once disturbed, titillated, and somehow gratified. ”

“ Since that I have had disputes to settle, all over this Continent, in settling the winter quarters for the Troops from whence I find, that the manner of quartering in England, as in time of peace, on Publick Houses only, will in no shape answer the intent in this country, for there are few Publick Houses and most of them sell nothing but spirits, where they possess only one room in which they sell the liquor, where men cannot be quartered. ”

“ I have not spoken of the gloom of older-fashioned residential quarters, frigid in their respectability, which, whatever centres of light and leading they may conceal, seem outwardly to turn the cold shoulder to ordinary humanity, or peep distrustfully at a wicked world through their fanlights. ”

“ Every house is built without reference to any other, and the scraps of space between them are called courts for want of another name. In the somewhat newer portions of the same quarter, and in other working-men’s quarters, dating from the early days of industrial activity, a somewhat more orderly arrangement may be found. ”

“ Hinde and I first came into the province the country was in the same condition it had been in for ages. We found that it contained about a million people, who lived in little villages, each containing about ten huts or so. There were no great chiefs. Each village was independent and almost constantly at war with the neighbouring villages. The citizens of one settlement knew nothing of those of the other settlements about. A man dared not venture more than ten miles from his home, and he had little knowledge of the country outside that radius. ”

“ The Indian official who wishes to obtain favourable notice at headquarters is very apt to promulgate a new plan of some crowded native town, by which broad streets are to replace the sinuous alleys, and before which the worst quarter will disappear. ”

“ CAPTAIN PENDER, C.S.N.
Well up town, something above quarter of a mile beyond the massive, battlemented armory in which we of the Third Infantry have our headquarters, a side street, branching off from one of the main thoroughfares, ambitiously stretches away until it finds its farther progress barred by a high, stone-capped, brick wall. There it stops. ”

“ There are a few plodding old pedants, with map and rules and compasses, who sit in small rooms and write memoranda; and there are some ignorant and not very active young men, who loiter about the head-quarters’ halls, and strut up the street with brass spurs on their heels and kepis raked over their eyes as though they were soldiers, but I see no system, no order, no knowledge, no dash! ”

“ We were never weary of exploring new quarters—even the narrow, squalid lanes and alleys with their dilapidated houses and ragged denizens, had a grotesque attraction for us—and often we would stand gazing at some wretched tenement, with falling timbers and stuffed windows, and speculate about the life of the people within. ”

“ But, for the most part, we of Our Square, going about our concerns, huddle as close as may be to the lee of walls, for—though we would not for the world have it known—many of us are none too warmly clad. Behind the blank opaqueness of the bordering windows one may surmise much want and penury and cold, which, also, we keep to ourselves. Our Square has its pride. We do not publish our trials.
Perhaps Cyrus the Gaunt knew as much of them as any. ”

“ That’s the secret of your close quarters here. We can’t have the poor wretches anywhere near the walls, so they are put away in the central courts, where we can keep an eye upon them, and overawe them if necessary. ”

“ This unceremonious mode of taking possession of new land was technically termed squatting, and hence is derived the appellation of squatters, a name odious in the ears of all great landholders, and which is given to those enterprising worthies who seize upon land first, and take their chance to make good their title to it afterward. ”

“ And to the British merchant, sitting at home at ease, it may appear that, with such a roof over your head and a spring of clear water hard by, the whole problem of the squatter's existence would be solved. ”

“ There appears a foolish pride in the representation of things from this quarter ; the strength and resources of the Country are far overrated, and those who are engaged in this business, to indulge their pride, will sacrifice their Country. The inhabitants are beginning to move off in great bodies, and unless a firmer barrier can be formed, this quarter will be all depopulated. We are living upon chanty, and subsist by daily collections. ”

“ One good result, too, is that our quarters have been greatly improved; for not only did the French build several new houses, but at present all the big men, the council and so on, are still living at Fort Saint David, which is still the seat of administration. So you see, we have got better quarters; we are rid of the stenches and nuisances of the native town; the plague of flies which made our life a burden is abated ”

“ Eight thousand four hundred and sixty square feet of courtiers! Give a square yard to each, and you have a matter of three thousand of them. Think of three thousand courtiers per day, and all the chopping and changing of them for near forty years; some of them dying; some getting their wishes and retiring to their provinces to enjoy their plunder ”

“ The same day the headquarters of the army were removed to the palace of Delhi. As the union jack of England ran up the flagstaff on the palace so lately occupied by the man crowned by the rebels Emperor of India, the seat and headquarters of the revolt which had deluged the land with blood, and caused the rule of England to totter, a royal salute was fired by the British guns, and tremendous cheers arose from the troops in all parts of the city. ”

“ There is a modern part, which took all our garrison, women, children, stores, and everything else, with plenty of room over. But the modern part is nothing like the size of the old quarter, where nobody goes, and which is given over to the scorpions and the centipedes. It is all full of great deserted halls, and winding passages, and long corridors twisting in and out, so that it is easy enough for folk to get lost in it. ”

“ The court upheld the squatters’ claim that the land did not belong to Hinkle, and this decision was the signal for squatters to rush in and seize bar land all along the river front. In the last thirty days perhaps a dozen men have settled on these bars.{56}
The fact of possession seems to be given considerable weight in this matter, and the land has generally been seized in the night. A squatter will pick out a piece of land that most suits his fancy, get some help, slip in at night, put a fence around it, and build a shack on it. ”

“ Employed as a year sign in the first case, the cross or swastika later became the symbol of the Four Quarters, of quadruplicate division and of a stable central power whose rule extended in four directions and controlled the entire Heaven.
At some remote period of antiquity man developed the idea of social organization and, in India, ancient Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria, actual proofs exist that the earliest cities and states were divided into four quarters, a division involving the distribution of the population into four tribes under a central chief. ”

“ The upper surface of this exhibits the same division into eight parts, marked by four large and four smaller rays, pointing to the quarters and half-quarters. Observation shows that of the sixteen localities four were assigned to each quarter and it is evident that the monument determined the time and the order in which the tribute for each was paid and collected at the capital. The one-footed man again graphically symbolizes axial rotation and conveys the idea of a central ruler who in turn seizes and exerts control upon 4×4 tribal chiefs. ”

“ Those huge and hideous blocks of building which rear themselves in what are called the new quarters are no tumble-down age-stricken rabbit-warrens; they have marble staircases, airy rooms, balconies, ornamental ironwork, lofty doorways. Built for riches, they have never represented anything beyond rags, dirt, loathsome crowding, and, for their owners, bankruptcy ”

“ To the minority of people, who live where they will and not where they must, this is a considerable exception, and one would suppose that the fashionable quarter would be that quarter from which the lake is most accessible. ”

“ It comes under the general head of statics and is this: by occupying an invariable bench in Our Square, looking venerable and contemplative and indigenous, as if you had grown up in that selfsame spot, you will draw people to come to you for information, and they will frequently give more than they get of it. ”

“ In Hindūstān hamlets and villages, towns indeed, are depopulated and set up in a moment! If the people of a large town, one inhabited for years even, flee from it, they do it in such a way that not a sign or trace of them remains in a day or a day and a half.1733 On the other hand, if they fix their eyes on [Pg 488] a place in which to settle, they need not dig water-courses or construct dams because their crops are all rain-grown,1734 and as the population of Hindūstān is unlimited, it swarms in. ”

“ The height and breadth of the capital itself must then conform to the size of the holes. The boards at the top and bottom of the capital, which are called "peritreti," should be in thickness equal to one hole, and in breadth to one and three quarters, except at their extremities, where they equal one hole and a half. ”

“ Finding our quarters, besides being too remote from business centers for my husband’s convenience, were rather cramped, as we were limited to two rooms, and without an out-building that could serve for a kitchen, another house-hunt was instituted, and eventually we succeeded in making ourselves very comfortable in comparison with the rough life that had been ours whenever we had previously been on the frontier. ”

“ I'll warrant you now, Corny, t'at t'e fellow, T'ousantacres, coult preach ant pray just like all t'e rest of our Pilgrim Fat'ers."
"There are rogues of New York birth and extraction, Colonel Follock, as well as of New England," answered my father, dryly; "and the practice of squatting is incidental to the condition of the country; as men are certain to make free with the property that is least protected and watched. Squatters are made by circumstances, and not by any peculiar disposition of a particular portion of the population to appropriate the land of others to their own uses. ”

“ On the left is the bar; the right-hand being used as the office of a land-agent, is besieged by crowds of country-people, in whom, if language is to be trusted, the grievous wrongs of land-tenure are painfully portrayed—nothing but complaint, dogged determination, and resistance being heard on every side. ”

“ At the other extremity of the town, if it be assize time, you will see some five hundred persons squatting in the Court-house, or buzzing and talking within; the rest of the respectable quarter of the city is pretty free from anything like bustle. ”

“ Now another headquarters and another general, also isolated in a dug-out, holding the reins of his wires over a section of line adjoining the section we had just left. Before we proceeded we must look over his shelter from shell-storms. The only time that British generals become boastful is over their dug-outs. They take all the pride in them of the man who has bought a plot of land and built himself a home ”

“ Within those doors, in some inner chamber, sat men whose task it was to direct the movements of the greatest force the world had ever known. They and their cousins in Paris and Frankfort, or wherever they lived, between them wielded a vaster authority than all the Parliaments of the earth. ”

“ Belding, as to that, I think my men did run across some staked ground. But we recognize only squatters. If your rangers think they've got property just because they drove a few stakes in the ground they're much mistaken. A squatter has to build a house and live on his land so long, according to law, before he owns it. ”

“ For as the business, which is usually transacted in any one county, is done by the Quakers in the same manner and in the same month in another, the reader, by supposing an aggregate of counties, may easily imagine, how the whole business of the society is done for the whole kingdom. ”

“ It is not often used, for our headquarters are in the great forest we shall presently come to; but it is as well when, occasionally, parties are sent out to hunt us, to have the means of crossing to the other side. ”

“ The old-fashioned Squatters were many of them sons of English gentlemen, with less wealth but with more education, knowledge of the world, and refinement, than those who are supplanting them, and they fell naturally into a position and duties in some degree resembling those of country gentlemen at home. ”

“ W. Westgarth, `Colony of Victoria,' p. 272:
"The great Riverine district, which is one vast series of squattages . . . the toil and solitude of a day's journey between the homesteads of adjacent squattages."
Squatter, n. (1) One who squats; that is, settles on land without a title or licence. This is an English use.
1835. T. A. Murray (Evidence before Legislative Council of New South Wales on Police and Gaols) :
"There are several parties of squatters in my neighbourhood. ”