t is near noon. My friend Mr. Great-Heart, familiarly known as "Jamie
Macdonald," has been taking me over the factory and stables. We have
been out since early morning on the jumpiest and beaniest of Waler
mares. I am not killed, but a good deal shaken. The glass trembles in
my hand. I have an absorbing thirst, and I drink copiously, almost
passionately. My out-stretched legs are reposing on the arms of my
chair and I stiffen into an attitude of rest. I hear my host splashing
and singing in his tub.

Breakfast is a meal conceived in a large and liberal spirit. We pass
from dish to dish through all the compass of a banquet, the diapason
closing full in beer. Several joyful assistants, whose appetites would
take first-class honours at any university or cattle show, join the
hunt and are well in at the beer. What tales are told! I feel glad
that Miss Harriet Martineau, Mrs. Mary Somerville, and Dr. Watts are
not present. I keep looking round to see that no bishop comes into the
room. It is a comfort to me to think that Bishop Heber is dead. I gave
up blushing five years ago when I entered the Secretariat; but if at
this moment Sir William Jones were to enter, or Mr. Whitley Stokes
with his child-like heart and his Cymric vocabulary, I believe I
should be strangely affected.

The day welters on through drink and billiards. In the afternoon more
joyful Planters drop in, and we play a rubber. From whist to the polo
ground, where I see the merry men of Tirhoot play the best and fastest
game that the world can show. At night carousals and potations pottle
deep. Next morning sees the entire party in the _khadar_[V] of the
river, mounted on Arabs, armed with spears, hunting Jamie Macdonald's
Caledonian boar. These Scotchmen never forget their nationality.

And while these joyful Planters are thus rejoicing, the indigo is
growing silently all round. While they play, Nature works for them. So
does the patient black man; he smokes his _huqqa_ and keeps an eye on
the rising crop.

You will have learnt from Mr. Caird that indigo grows in cakes (the
ale is imported); to his description of the process of manufacture I
can only add that the juice is generally expressed in the vernacular.
You give a cake of the raw material to a coloured servant, you stand
over him to see that he doesn't eat it, and your assistant canes him
slowly as he squeezes the juice into a blue bottle. Blue pills are
made of the refuse; your female servants use