and I don't know that we can afford it. Personally I'd rather have our
little country as it was in the time of James IV.--well defended--with
our good men at home, a chivalrous Court, and the best fleet of the
time, than to be as at present without a name or Court--a milch cow to
the Empire.

I had the pleasure of seeing this host engaged in a congenial duty--that
of raising the statue to Nicholson. We were taken to the spot where he
fell, and saw where Roberts stood, and heard tales of many other great
"Englishmen"--be--dad!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

We lived almost on the Ridge and its russet-coloured boulders, and
looked slightly down to Delhi (I'd always pictured the besiegers looking
up at the walls). How astonishingly fresh it all is; the living deadly
interest. Gracious--the stones on the wall haven't yet rolled into the
ditch from the bombarding--you can almost smell the powder smoke in the
air--and it is still hot!

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

It was very hot going to Agra. I've a recollection of the journey which
seems funny now; "When pleasure is, what past pain was." We had been
saving a thirst all morning, and at a junction went absolutely parched
with heat and fatigue for ice and soda, and perhaps a little
mountain-dew, for we were very faint. And there was no soda water!--and
there was no ice!--but there was whisky--and warm lemonade! I'd to
sprint along the metals to our carriage in the white heat, and there got
two bottles of hot soda. So we finally had a little tepid toddy, and sat
and grimly studied our countrymen's expressions as they came into the
restaurant hot and tired, from different trains, and asked for the drink
of our country. You'd have thought they would have sworn, but they did
not, which gives you an idea of the climate; they mostly looked too
tired; at mid-day on an Indian railway one has barely sufficient energy
left to say tut-tut!

[Illustration: A Delhi Street Scene]

Getting near Agra from the plains was very pleasant!--the ground rises a
little and becomes sandier and less cultivated, so the air is clean and
refreshing.

We saw the Taj at first in distance over this almost white sandy soil
and grey ferash bushes--saw it slightly blurred by the quivering heat
off the ground, and against a pale, hot, blue sky, and through thin hot
brown smoke from our engine, and its general outline in