The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

Then there are the daily risks of a service carried on in a country subject to great convulsions of Nature and where wild beasts abound. In one year this was the chapter of accidents. There were thirty-two highway robberies of the mail, of which twenty occurred in British territory and eight in native States. No life was lost, but in nineteen cases the mail carriers were more or less seriously injured. Other casualties in the same year were the loss of a mail steamer and all hands by a cyclone, the sinking of a steam launch in the Gulf of Cutch, and the wrecking of the mail train from Madras to Bombay owing to the destruction of a bridge by flood. The mail line at Gilgit was twice overwhelmed by avalanches, two runners were drowned while trying to cross flooded streams, an overseer in Assam was attacked by a wild buffalo and died of his wounds, and a village postman in Madras was mauled to death by two bears. In Eastern Bengal a postmaster was murdered and his postman was wounded by dacoits, and another postman was murdered in a hut. As many as twenty-three post offices were burnt down, three were blown down, and three were washed away by floods. Truly there are perils connected with the Indian postal service of which we know nothing in Great Britain. In the chapter of accidents for another year we read of a mail runner who was carried away in broad daylight by a man-eating tiger, another mail runner was attacked by a wolf described as “the terror of the country side,” but he succeeded in killing the animal after a severe struggle. “Slain by a tiger,” “badly mauled by a leopard,” are descriptions of the accidents to other postal servants.