use this year and took one close to the Stewarts, an
arrangement for which I was very thankful later, when my wife had a
great sorrow in the death of her sister, Mrs. Sladen, at Peshawar. It
was everything for her at such a time to have a kind and sympathizing
friend close at hand, when I was engaged with my work and could be
very little with her during the day. At this time, as at all others,
Sir Hugh Rose was a most considerate friend to us; he placed his house
at Mashobra at my wife's disposal, thus providing her with a quiet
resort which she frequently made use of and which she learned to love
so much that, when I returned to Simla as Commander-in-Chief, her
first thought was to secure this lovely 'Retreat' as a refuge from the
(sometimes) slightly trying gaiety of Simla.

The Commander-in-Chief was good enough to send in my name for a brevet
for the Umbeyla expedition, but the Viceroy refused to forward the
recommendation, for the reason that I was 'too junior to be made a
Lieutenant-Colonel.' I was then thirty-two!

Throughout the whole of 1864 I was more or less ill; the office work
(which never suited me quite as well as more active employment) was
excessive, for, in addition to the ordinary routine, I had undertaken
to revise the 'Bengal Route-Book,' which had become quite obsolete,
having been compiled in 1837, when Kurnal was our frontier station. A
voyage round the Cape was still considered the panacea for all Indian
ailments, and the doctors strongly advised my taking leave to England,
and travelling by that route.

We left Simla towards the end of October, and, after spending the next
three months in Calcutta, where I was chiefly employed in taking up
transports and superintending the embarkation of troops returning to
England, I was given the command of a batch of 300 time-expired men
on board the _Renown_, one of Green's frigate-built ships which was
chartered for their conveyance. Two hundred of the men belonged to
the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Rifle Brigade, the remainder to the
Artillery and various other corps; they had all been twelve years in
the army, and most of them were decorated for service in the Crimea
and Indian Mutiny.

At the inspection parade before we embarked, a certain number of men
were brought up for punishment for various offences committed on
the way down country; none of the misdemeanours appeared to me very
serious, so I determined to let the culprits off. I told the men