years India has become a favourite field for
travellers who can without inconvenience spend a few hundred pounds, and
be absent from home three or four months. Swift steamers take them
quickly to and from Bombay, and railways carry them in a short time from
one end of India to the other. They travel at the season when travelling
is delightful, and thus see the different countries of that great region
in their most attractive form. If they infer what they do not see from
what they see, they are sure to make statements utterly discordant with
fact. Mr. Wilson, who was sent out to India to put its finances into
order after the Mutiny, travelled through the North-Western Provinces in
the cold weather, when the country was covered with abundant crops, and
was delighted with all he saw. He declared it was the finest country he
had ever seen. He returned to Calcutta as the hot weather was setting
in, and died in the succeeding rainy season. It is said that some time
before his death he pronounced the climate to be the most detestable on
the face of the globe. Dr. Norman McLeod was our guest for a very short
time in Benares, as he was prosecuting his Indian journey. When driving
about on a fine balmy morning, he said, in his genial fashion, "You
missionaries often complain of your climate; I only wish we in Scotland
had a climate like this." To which I replied, "Ah, doctor, kindly stop
with us through our coming seasons; prolong your stay till next
November, and then you will be able to speak with authority." The worthy
doctor did not take my counsel. His death some time afterwards was
attributed to his Indian tour; but if it left in him the seed of
disease, the blame rests not on the climate, but on the excessive
fatigue caused by overmuch travelling and work.

The case of a person who has lived through a whole year in a country,
and has during that period moved among the people, is very different
from that of the passing stranger. He knows the climate as a traveller
for a few weeks or even months cannot. The seasons during that year may
have been more or less abnormal, and yet the resident cannot fail to
have obtained that knowledge which enables him to form a notion of what
he has in the main to expect every year. He gets a glimpse into the
character and peculiarities of the different classes of the population,
both native and foreign. He may know little of the language of the
country; but if he has an observing mind, and mov