e feeling that, however distasteful, it need not
necessarily last very long; and he can look forward to a rapid and
easy return to England and friends at no very distant period. At the
time I am writing of he could not but feel completely cut off from all
that had hitherto formed his chief interests in life--his family
and his friends--for ten years is an eternity to the young, and the
feeling of loneliness and home-sickness was apt to become almost
insupportable.

The climate added its depressing influence; there was no going to the
hills then, and as the weary months dragged on, the young stranger
became more and more dispirited and hopeless. Such was my case. I had
only been four months in India, but it seemed like four years. My joy,
therefore, was unbounded when at last my marching orders arrived.
Indeed, the idea that I was about to proceed to that grand field of
soldierly activity, the North-West Frontier, and there join my father,
almost reconciled me to the disappointment of losing my chance of
field service in Burma. My arrangements were soon made, and early in
August I bade a glad good-bye to Dum-Dum.

[Footnote 1: In the fifty-seven years preceding the Mutiny the annual
rate of mortality amongst the European troops in India was sixty-nine
per thousand, and in some stations it was even more appalling. The
Royal Commission appointed in 1864 to inquire into the sanitary
condition of the army in India expressed the hope that, by taking
proper precautions, the mortality might be reduced to the rate of
twenty per thousand per annum. I am glad to say that this hope has
been more than realized, the annual death-rate since 1882 having never
risen to seventeen per thousand.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER II.
1852

Bengal Horse Artillery--Incidents of the journey--New Friends

When I went to India the mode of travelling was almost as primitive
as it had been a hundred, and probably five hundred, years before.
Private individuals for the most part used palankins, while officers,
regiments, and drafts were usually sent up country by the river route
as far as Cawnpore. It was necessarily a slow mode of progression--how
slow may be imagined from the fact that it took me nearly three months
to get from Dum-Dum to Peshawar, a distance now traversed with the
greatest ease and comfort in as many days. As far as Benares I
travelled in a barge towed by a steamer--a performance which took th