y. Jokes are feeble and personalities tedious
morality is stale, religion is cant. What, how can I write? You have had
a taste of all and if you are not content the fault is--well, let me be
on the safe side--either yours or mine.

AUGUST 23rd, Sunday.--We continued to progress last night by moonlight
long after the sun had set, and started again very early this morning,
so that the Tukh-t-i-Suliman (Soloman's Throne) and Fort are now
visible, and I expect to reach Sreenuggur before noon. It is faster work
floating down the current than towing against it. At Sreenuggur I found
several letters waiting for me, and amongst them a large "Official,"
which I tore open with eager haste; thinking it might be a reply to my
application to be sent home. It was ----. Well, you will never guess--an
urgent enquiry as to what language I could speak and write fluently
beside English. I have answered this question some half dozen times
since I have been in the service, but they never get tired of asking it.
The date of my arrival in India is another favourite and constantly
recurring enquiry, and this might lead me to give you a dissertation
upon the theory and practice of Red-tapeism, with a special
consideration of the amount of stationery thereby wasted, and its
probable cost to the Government. It would perhaps, be very interesting
to you, but to any one who is at all connected with it, the subject is
only one of weariness and disgust--weariness at the unproductive labour
entailed--disgust at the utter folly of the proceedings. So I pass it
by, leaving some one who is willing to sacrifice his feelings, or more
probably some one who knows nothing whatever about it to furnish the
much needed expose; it is customary to cry it down but it is an
acknowledged evil, the custom has never been fully and fairly explained
to outsiders or it must have given way before the burst of public
indignation which such an explanation would have created. I have again
encamped in the Chinar Bugh, but not quite in the old position as a
better place was unoccupied. Indeed I had my pick of the whole, for
there is now nobody here but myself. I received news (in my letters)
that a field force had left Pindee to operate against some of the hill
tribes between Peshawur and Abbottabad--ruffians who are always giving
trouble, and who occasioned the inglorious Umbeylla campaign a few
years ago. I informed my "boy" that there was going to be some hard
fighting, and