Hills, who had now become the Viceroy's Aide-de-camp; while in Lord
Clyde's camp there were Norman, Stewart, and Becher.

I had, of course, taken my wife to the scenes of the fights at Agra,
Aligarh, and Bulandshahr, but Delhi had the greatest fascination for
her. It is certainly an extraordinarily attractive place, setting
aside the peculiar interest of the siege. For hundreds of years it had
been the seat of Government under Rulers of various nationalities and
religions; few cities have the remains of so much pomp and glory, and
very few bear the traces of having been besieged so often, or could
tell of so much blood spilt in their defence, or of such quantities of
treasure looted from them. When Tamerlane captured Delhi in 1398 the
city was given over to massacre for five days, 'some streets being
rendered impassable by heaps of dead'; and in 1739 the Persian
conqueror, Nadir Shah, after sacking the place for fifty-eight days
and massacring thousands of its inhabitants, carried off thirty-two
millions sterling of booty.

Although the fierce nature of the struggle that Delhi had gone through
in 1857 was apparent everywhere, the inhabitants seemed now to have
forgotten all about it. The city was as densely populated as it had
ever been; the Chandni Chauk was gay as formerly with draperies of
bright-coloured stuffs; jewellers and shawl-merchants carried on their
trades as briskly as ever, and were just as eager in their endeavours
to tempt the _Sahib log_ to spend their money as if trade had never
been interrupted; so quickly do Orientals recover from the effects of
a devastating war.

We left Delhi on the 3rd January, 1860, marching _via_ Karnal. When at
this place my wife went to see Lady Canning, as she often did if we
remained at all late in camp. On this particular occasion she found
her busy with the English mail, which had just arrived, so she said
she would not stay then, but would come next day instead. Lady
Canning, however, would not let my wife go until she had read her part
of a letter from Lady Waterford, which she thought would amuse her. It
was in answer to one from Lady Canning, in which she had described
the camp, and given her sister a list of all the people in it. Lady
Waterford wrote: 'Your Quartermaster-General must be the son of
General Roberts, who lives near Waterford; he came home on leave last
year. I must tell you an amusing little anecdote about his father. One
night, when the General w