Calcutta to meet my wife and take her to Allahabad, where we remained
for nearly a year, her first experience of a hot season in the plains,
and a very bad one it was. Cholera was rife; the troops had to be sent
away into camps, more or less distant from the station, all of which
had to be visited once, if not twice, daily; this kept me pretty well
on the move from morning till night. It was a sad time for everyone.
People we had seen alive and well one day were dead and buried the
next; and in the midst of all this sorrow and tragedy the most
irksome--because such an incongruous--part of our experience was that
we had constantly to get up entertainments, penny readings, and the
like, to amuse the men and keep their minds occupied, for if once
soldiers begin to think of the terrors of cholera they are seized with
panic, and many get the disease from pure fright.

My wife usually accompanied me to the cholera camps, preferring to do
this rather than be left alone at home. On one occasion, I had just
got into our carriage after going round the hospital, when a young
officer ran after us to tell me a corporal in whom I had been much
interested was dead. The poor fellow's face was blue; the cholera
panic had evidently seized him, and I said to my wife, 'He will be the
next.' I had no sooner reached home than I received a report of his
having been seized.

We were fortunate in having at Allahabad as Chaplain the present
Bishop of Lahore, who, with his wife, had only lately come to India;
they never wearied in doing all that was possible for the soldiers.
Bishop Matthew is still one of our closest friends; his good, charming
and accomplished wife, alas! died some years ago.

We remained at Allahabad until August, 1867, when we heard that a
brigade from Bengal was likely to be required to take part in an
expedition which would probably be sent from Bombay to Abyssinia for
the relief of some Europeans whom the King, Theodore, had imprisoned,
and that the Mountain battery, on the strength of which my name was
still borne, would in such case be employed. I therefore thought I had
better go to Simla, see the authorities, and arrange for rejoining
my battery, if the rumour turned out to be true. The cholera had now
disappeared, so I was at liberty to take leave, and we both looked
forward to a cooler climate and a change to brighter scenes after the
wretched experience we had been through. On my arrival at Simla I
called upon