rk, would do one good."

"Yes, it is not a bad thing," Johnson said. "A good many fellows do
it, when they first come out here. But after a time they lose their
energy, you see, though some do keep it up.

"What appetites you fellows have! It does one good to see you eat."

"I have not the least idea what we are eating," Charlie said,
laughing; "but it's really very nice, whatever it is. But there seems
an immense quantity of pepper, or hot stuff of some kind or other;
which one would have thought, in this tremendous heat, would have made
one hotter instead of cooler."

"Yes," their new friend answered. "No doubt all this pepper and curry
do heat the blood; but you see, it is done to tempt the appetite. Meat
here is fearfully coarse and tasteless. Our appetites are poor, and
were it not for these hot sauces, we should eat next to nothing.

"Will you have some bananas?"

"They are nice and cool," Peters said as, having peeled the long fruit
as he saw his companion doing, he took a bite of one; "but they have
very little taste."

"Most of our fruit is tasteless," Johnson said, "except, indeed, the
mango and mangostine. They are equal to any English fruit in flavour,
but I would give them all for a good English apple. Its sharpness
would be delicious here.

"And now, as you have done, if you will come and sit in the veranda of
my room, we will smoke a cigar and have something cool to drink; and I
will answer, as well as I can, the questions you've asked me about the
state of things here."

When they had seated themselves in the extremely comfortable cane
chairs, in a veranda facing the sea, and had lit their cigars, their
friend began:

"Madras isn't much of a place, now; but you should have seen it before
the French had it. Our chiefs think of nothing but trade, and care
nothing how squalid and miserable is the place in which they make
money. The French have larger ideas. They transformed this place;
cleared away that portion of the native town which surrounded the
factory and fort, made wide roads, formed an esplanade, improved and
strengthened the fortifications, forbade the natives to throw all
their rubbish and offal on the beach; and made, in fact, a decent
place of it. We hardly knew it when we came back, and whatever the
Company may have thought, we were thoroughly grateful for the French
occupation.

"One good result, too, is that our quarters have been greatly
improved; for not only did the French