o change has taken place in our plans. We move
rather more slowly, and I have given up the idea of going to Peshawur;
but this is rather occasioned by the desire to confer with the Punjab
Government, while these affairs on the frontier are in progress, than
by my mishap.

I think that the expedition (against the Sitana fanatics) will be a
success; and I labour incessantly to urge the necessity of confining
its objects to the first intentions. Plausible reasons for enlarging
the scope of such adventures are never wanting; but I shall endeavour
to keep this within its limits.

Lady Elgin is bearing up courageously, under a great pressure of
labour and anxiety.

The sad story of what follows cannot be told in other words than those in
which it has already been given to the world, with all the skill of an
artist combined with the tenderness of a brother, and with that fulness of
authentic detail which only one source could supply.[4]

'Although he had suffered often from the unhealthy and depressing climate
of Calcutta during the summer and autumn of 1862, and thus, to the eyes
that saw him again in 1863, he looked many years older than when he left
England, yet it was not till he entered the Hills that any symptom
manifested itself of the fatal malady that was lurking under his apparently
stout frame and strong constitution. The splendid scenery of those vast
forests and snow-clad mountains inspired him with the liveliest pleasure;
but the highly rarefied atmosphere, which to most residents in India is as
life from the dead, seemed in him to have the exactly reverse effect.

'It was on the 12th of October that he ascended the Rotung Pass, and on the
13th he crossed the famous Twig Bridge over the river Chandra. It is
remarkable for the rude texture of birch branches of which it is composed,
and which, at this late season, was so rent and shattered by the wear and
tear of the past year as to render the passage of it a matter of great
exertion. Lord Elgin was completely prostrated by the effort, and it may be
said that from the exhaustion consequent on this adventure he never
rallied. But he returned to his camp, and continued his march on horseback,
until, on the 22nd, an alarming attack obliged him to be carried, by slow
stages, to Dhurmsala. There he was joined, on the 4th of November, by his
friend and medical adviser, Dr. Macrae, who had been summoned from
Calcutta, on the