--rather sickening colour. The whole population seems to
have had a holiday to see the Sahibs run some fifteen to twenty horses.
They seem rather an unmanly looking crowd. The pink that predominates
is what you see in an unfortunate hybrid white and red poppy, an analine
colour, as unpleasant as that of red ink--Give me back--give me back
Bangalore and its colour, our life on the line, a quiet siding beneath
the bough, the table laid on the track, and the moon looking down
through the branches.

28th December.--There is a thing I cannot understand how the farther we
wander from home the more people we meet whom we know or know about, or
who know us or our kith and kin. And how do we so often run up against
people we met on the ship coming out? You'd have thought India big
enough to swallow up a shipload of passengers for ever and aye, without
their ever meeting again, but even since yesterday we have met quite a
number of the passengers of the _Egypt_--three regular "pied poudre"
wanderers, as the French called the Scots long ago, and a lady just out,
full of interest in everything. She actually wants to see native bazaars
and museums! to the horror of her hosts, who have been out here for long
and whose thoughts are only of the tented field, and pay, and going
home.

... A long trail to shipping people again--former visit resulted only in
a protracted interview with a polite native clerk, so the toil had to be
done twice! Then to the post office at the docks; borrowed a rusty pen
there from another native clerk and did a home letter. What a fine
building it is, and what a motley slack lot of people you see there!
Near me a group of half-naked natives were concocting and scratching off
a wire between them, others squatted on the floor and beat up their
friends black hair for small game. One man made netting attached to the
rail round the ticket office, seated of course, another knitted, and
everyone chewed betel nut. The walls of this very handsome building were
encrusted with dried red expectoration, and scored with splashes of lime
from fingers--the lime is chewed with the betel nut. These nasty sort of
natives might be improved or got rid of, and say, Burmese introduced.
What is the good of having a country or a forest if you don't breed a
good stock, be it either deer or people?

Changed to airier rooms on our second evening here; got everything
shifted in pretty short time. We thus lost a pretty view and, the sme