Twelve Years of a Soldier's Life in India / Being Extracts from the Letters of the Late Major W. S. R. Hodson, B. A.

Camp, Wuzeerabad, Feb. 19th, 1849.

I have at length reached the "army of the Punjaub," almost by accident, as it were, though I was most anxious to be present at the final grand struggle between the Khalsa and the British armies. I am at present with my men, attached to a brigade encamped on this (the left) bank of the Chenab, to prevent the enemy crossing until Lord Gough is ready to attack them on the right bank, where he is now encamped with his whole force minus our brigade. The Sikhs quietly walked away from him the other day, and instead of having their backs to the Jhelum, passed round his flank, and made steadily for this place, intending, boldly enough, to march upon Lahore. I came across the Doâb with a handful of men, and reached this place just as they took up a position on the opposite bank of the river. At the same moment a brigade arrived by a forced night-march from Ramnuggur, and, for the present, the Sikhs have been sold. Yet I should not be surprised at their evading us again, and going off to a higher ford. The game is getting very exciting, and I am quite enjoying the stir and bustle of two large armies in the field. The grand finale must, one would think, come off in a day or two. It is possible however that, as I say, the Sikhs may out-manœuvre us and prolong the campaign. The Affghans have joined the Sikhs, contrary to the expectations of every one (but myself), and there is now no saying where the struggle will end.

The Affghans are contemptible in the plains, generally speaking; but numbers become formidable, even if armed with broomsticks.

April 17th, 1849.

You will have heard of the great events of the last month; how on the 26th March, the Punjaub became "forever" a British Province, governed by a Triumvirate; and how the Koh-i-noor was appropriated as a present to the Queen,—and all the rest of it; you may imagine the turmoil and unrest of this eventful time; but I defy you to imagine the confusion of the process which converts a wild native kingdom into a police-ridden and civilian-governed country.

I had anticipated and wished for this measure. I did not, however, expect that it would be carried out so suddenly and so sweepingly as it has been....

I have been annexed as well as the Punjaub! my "occupation's gone," and although efforts have been and are making for my restoration to "the department," yet at present I am shelved. I shall know more next month. Meanwhile, I am off with the new Commissioner to instruct him in the details of his province, which I had governed and won from the rebels during the last six months, but in which I am not now accounted worthy to be a humble assistant. There's fame! Well, something will turn up, I suppose. I hope to remain here, however, under the Commissioner, for a time, that I may get acquainted with this wonderful civil system. It is as well to know how the mill works.

I got quite fond of Lord Gough. I was his guest at Lahore for a month, and his noble character and fire made one condone his mistakes.

We are now on the "qui vive" for his successor. I long for Sir C. Napier, but the Court of Directors seem determined to hold out.

The Guides are at Peshawur, where I shall probably join them.

Peshawur, May 14th, 1849.

My stay here is very uncertain. I merely came to settle affairs with Lumsden relative to the increase of the Guides. Meantime, I have been much interested with my first visit to this Affghan province and to the Indus. You will see at once that though it gives us a very strong military frontier, only passable to armies in half a dozen points, and therefore infinitely less difficult to hold than a long line of river, which is ever "a silent highway for nations," yet at the same time we have once more established a footing in Affghanistan from which there is no receding, as we did when we went as allies to the puppet Shah Soojah. Our next stride must be to Herât, I fancy; when the day will come no man can say, but "the uncontrollable principle," which, according to Sir R. Peel, took us there before, will not be the less active in its operation now that we have no longer the court and camp of Runjeet Singh between us and these wild tribes. It is to be hoped that "the uncontrollable principle" will not appear so very like an uncontrollable want of it as it did in days gone by! However, go we must, and shall some day,—so hurrah for Cabul!

I wish you would hit upon some plan for keeping me more "au fait" with the events of your home world. My time has been occupied so constantly since I came to India, that, though I may have made some progress in the knowledge of men, I have made but little in that of books. We are sadly off for military works in English, and few sciences require more study than the art of war. You might get me a list of good works from the "United Service Institution" at Charing Cross. I want the best edition of Cæsar procurable; also Xenophon and Arrian. I fancy the last has been very well edited.

Peshawur, June 8th, 1849.

This is the first time I have written to you from Affghanistan. Who shall say whence my letters may be directed within a few months. Are we to advance on Cabul and Candahar, and plant the Union Jack once more on the towers of Ghuznee? or are we to lie peacefully slumbering on the banks of the Indus? Are our conquests at an end? or will it be said of Lord Dalhousie—

My own belief is, that I shall live to see both the places I have mentioned, and Herât, occupied by British troops; at least, I hope so.

I think I told you how it had pleased the Governor-General to reward "my distinguished services," toils, troubles, and dangers, by kicking me out of the coach altogether. Did I not? Well, after that close to my civil duties, after having "initiated" the new Commissioner into his duties, I was sent up hither to augment recruits and train the Guides. And now daily, morning and evening, I may be seen standing on one leg to convince their Affghan mind of the plausibility and elegance of the goose step. I am quite a sergeant-major just now, and you will well believe that your wandering brother is sufficiently cosmopolized to drop with a certain "aplomb" into any line of life which may turn up in the course of his career. I was always fond of "soldiering," and there is a species of absurdity in dropping from the minister of a province into a drill-sergeant, which is enlivening. By the next mail I may have to report my transformation into some new animal. So "vive la gloire."

Peshawur, July 19th, 1849.

I hope that you got my letter about sending me books. There is a remarkable dearth of them here just now. You know it was a flying column which came on here after Goojerat, composed of regiments hurried up to the field from Bombay, Scinde, and Hindostan. They came in light marching order. Books are not a part of that style of equipment. Suddenly a Government order consigned them to Peshawur, for seven months at least,—10,000 men, with an unusually large number of Europeans and officers, and no books! Pleasant during the confinement caused by the hot season. I was better off, because, being a nomad by profession, I carry a few books as a part even of the lightest equipment, but I have read them all till I am tired, except Shakspeare. My time is pretty fully occupied, but there are dozens of regimental officers who have not an hour's work in two days, and I do pity them from my heart. Then of course there are no ladies here, and consequently no society, or réunions, (as they are called when people live together,) and people are pitched headlong on to their own resources, and find them very hard falling indeed! I have nothing personal to tell you, except that when the last mail went out I was in bed with a sharp attack of fever, which left me without strength, flesh, or appetite,—a regular blazing eastern fever, the sort of thing which burns so fast, that if it don't stop quickly, it burns you well down into the socket, and leaves you there without strength to splutter or flicker, and you go out without the satisfaction of a last flare-up at expiring. I am thankful to say I am well again now, and picking up strength fast.

They are increasing our corps of Guides to 1,000 men, so that I shall have enough on my hands, especially as our Commandant leaves almost everything to me. Sir H. Lawrence writes from Simla that I am to be appointed an Assistant Commissioner under the new Board of Administration. I was the only one of the late Assistants to the Resident who was not included at first in the new régime.

Lahore, Sept. 3d, 1849.

On my arrival here I found your note of 18th June. You may imagine how wild I was with pleasure at seeing your handwriting again, as I had been deeply anxious since the arrival of my father's and George's letters of the 4th June. These brought me the first tidings of our darling's death. Happily I saw no newspaper by that mail, and the black edges first startled me from the belief that you were all well and happy. The blow was a bitter one indeed, and its utter suddenness was appalling. Indeed, the prevailing impression on my mind for days was simple unbelief of the reality of that sweet child's actual death. I have been so long alone,—home has been for so long a time more a pleasant dream than a reality,—I have been for so many a weary day, as it were, dead to you all, and the sense of separation has grown so completely into one's being, that I find it difficult to separate that which it is possible to see again from that which is impossible. Thus it seems to me incredible that any greater barrier can sever me from this darling child than that ever-present one which divides me from all of you. Can you understand this? I know it to be a delusion, and yet I cannot shake it off. Yet 'tis a good delusion in one way. It deadens the sense of grief which the full realization of her death would overwhelm me with.

I have been unfortunate again, and had a second sharp attack of fever since my arrival. I am about again, but not able to work. Sir H. Lawrence is very unwell; I fear that his constitution is utterly broken down, and that he will either have to go away from India for two years or more, or that another hot season will kill him. He is ten years older in every respect than he was during our Cashmere trip in 1846. This is a hard, wearing, dry climate, which, though preferable to Hindostan, is destructive to the weak and sickly. It is quite sad to feel how, little by little, one's strength and muscle and energy fade, and how one can perceive age creeping in upon one so early.

Lahore, Sept. 24th, 1849.

You know that I have left the Guides (alas!) and have been transformed into a complete civilian, doomed to pass the rest of my career in the administrative and executive duties of the Government of this last acquisition of the English in India. To tell the truth, I had much rather have remained with the Guides; a more independent, and very far pleasanter life, and I think one that will in the end be more distinguished. However, I was guided by Mr. Thomason's and Sir H. Lawrence's advice, and must take the consequences. It would be difficult to define or explain the exact nature of my new calling, but in brief, you will comprehend that in their respective districts the Deputy Assistant Commissioners perform the whole of the judicial, fiscal, and magisterial duties which devolve upon the Government of a country in Europe, with the addition of collecting from the cultivators and landholders the rent of all lands under cultivation and pasture, and the duties which in Europe devolve on an owner of landed property. Police, jails, quarter-sessions, committals to prison, jury, judge, excise, stamps, taxes, roads, bridges, ferries, woods and forests, and finally rent! think what these imply, and you will form some idea of the employment of an official in the Punjaub under the "Board of Administration." I have not yet dipped very deep into this turbid stream of ever-recurring work, since the great amount of arrears consequent on the break-up of one Government, and the establishment of another, including the paying-up and discharge of vast civil and military establishments, have rendered it necessary to employ any available head and pair of hands for some months at head-quarters. The army has fallen to my share, and I have to examine into the claims of innumerable fine old hangers-on of the Lahore State to grants or pensions, to record their rights, and report on them for the decision of Government. Then there are upwards of 2,000 old women, wives and mothers of soldiers killed in war, whom I have to see and pay the pittance decreed by their masters. Lord Dalhousie, and his secretaries and officials, are stern and hard taskmasters, and are not unworthily represented by the new Board, the only merciful member of which (Sir H. Lawrence) is left in a minority, and is, moreover, too ill to do much.

Camp, Patankote, Jan. 21st, 1850.

I at length got away from Lahore on the 7th. I had been ordered merely to seek change of air, but Sir H. Lawrence was starting on a long tour of inspection, and offered me the option of accompanying him, and doing a little work by the way, which I very much preferred; so here we are, after visiting the sacred city of Umritsur, and the scenes of my last year's adventures in Butala, Deenanuggur, and Shahpoor, all between the Ravee and Beas; and are now on our way to the mountain stations of Kangra, &c. We then go to the westward again, and I hope to see

as I have dubbed the Indus, ere we again return to civil life, which does not suit my temperament or taste half as well as this more nomad life. I am able to ride again, though not quite with the same firmness, in the saddle as of yore. I have no doubt, however, that ere we do see the "Borysthenes," I shall be as "game" for a gallop of one hundred miles on end, as I was last year at this season.

Umritsur, March 4th, 1850.

I am at last in a fair way of being stationary for a time at Umritsur, the sacred city of the Sikhs, and a creation entirely of their genius. Lahore, as of course you know, was the old Mussulman capital, and was not built by the Sikhs, though used by them as the seat of government and head-quarters of the army. Umritsur is larger than Lahore by a third or more of people, and half as much again of space. It is five miles in circumference, very strongly fortified, and covered by the fortress of Govindghur on the west, and by a large fortified garden on the north. I am Assistant Commissioner under the Deputy Commissioner in charge of the district, Mr. Saunders, a civilian, a very nice sort of fellow, with an exceedingly pretty and nice wife. Mr. Montgomery is our Commissioner. I like all I have seen of him very much indeed. He is a very able man, and at the head of his service in many respects. Lahore is only about thirty-five miles hence,—quite within visiting distance in India.

You must not talk of getting "acclimatized." There is no way of becoming so but by avoiding the climate as much as possible. I have had a bad time of it since I left Peshawur, three and a half months almost entirely on my back, which reduced me terribly. Then just as I was getting well, the other day I had a fit of jaundice, which has only just left me; altogether, in health and in prospects I have come "down in my luck" to a considerable extent; not that, per se, I ought, as a subaltern of not quite five years' service, to grumble at my present position, if I was now starting in the line for the first time; but I can't forget that I came into the Punjaub two years and a half ago, and have had no little of the "burden and heat of the day" to bear, when to do so required utter disregard of comfort and personal safety and of rest. It is now two years since I was made an Assistant to the Resident, and within a few months of that time I took absolute charge of a tract of country (in a state of war, too) comprising three modern districts, in one of which I am now playing third fiddle. Surely annexation was a "heavy blow and a great discouragement" to me, at least. In the military line, too, I have been equally unlucky, from the fact of my services having been with detachments instead of with the main army. I held my ground (and cleared it of the enemy, too) for weeks, with only 120 men at my back, and when every officer, from General Wheeler downwards, entreated me to withdraw and give it up; I fed 5,000 men and horses for six months by personal and unremitting exertion; collected the revenues of the disturbed districts, and paid 15,000l. over and above, into the treasury, from the proceeds of property taken from the rebels. Besides this, I worked for General Wheeler so satisfactorily, that he has declared publicly that he could have done nothing without me. So much were the Sikhs enraged[13] at my proceedings, that party after party were sent to "polish" me off, and at one time I couldn't stir about the country without having bullets sent at my head from every bush and wall. However, I need not go on with the catalogue, I have been egotistical enough as it is. The "reward" for these services was losing my civil appointment, and being reduced to half pay or little more for three months, and the distinction of being the only subaltern mentioned in despatches for whom nothing has been done either "in præsenti" or "in prospectu." "Had your name been Hay or Ramsay," said General Wheeler to me the other day, "no honors, no appointments, no distinctions would have been considered too great to mark the services you have rendered to Government." Well, we shall live to see more wars, or I am sadly mistaken, and then—I leave you to finish the sentence.

March 18th, 1850.

At the age at which officers become colonels and majors, not one in fifty is able to stand the wear and tear of Indian service. They become still more worn in mind than in body. All elasticity is gone; all energy and enterprise worn out; they become, after a fortnight's campaign, a burden to themselves, an annoyance to those under them, and a terror to every one but the enemy! The officer who commanded the cavalry brigade which so disgraced the service at Chillianwalla, was not able to mount a horse without the assistance of two men. A brigadier of infantry, under whom I served during the three most critical days of the late war, could not see his regiment when I led his horse by the bridle until its nose touched the bayonets; and even then he said faintly, "Pray which way are the men facing, Mr. Hodson?" This is no exaggeration, I assure you. Can you wonder that our troops have to recover by desperate fighting, and with heavy loss, the advantages thrown away by the want of heads and eyes to lead them?

A seniority service, like that of the Company, is all very well for poor men; better still for fools, for they must rise equally with wise men; but for maintaining the discipline and efficiency of the army in time of peace, and hurling it on the enemy in war, there never was a system which carried so many evils on its front and face.

I speak strongly, you will say, for I feel acutely; though I am so young a soldier, yet the whole of my brief career has been spent in camps, and a year such as the last, spent in almost constant strife, and a great part of it on detached and independent command, teaches one lessons which thirty years of peaceful life, of parades and cantonments, would never impart.

There are men of iron, like Napier and Radetzky, aged men, whom nothing affects; but they are just in sufficient numbers to prove the rule by establishing exceptions. Depend upon it, that for the rough work of war, especially in India, your leaders must be young to be effective.

If you could but see my beautiful rough and ready boys, with their dirt colored clothes and swarthy faces, lying in wait for a Sikh, I think it would amuse you not a little. I must try and send you a picture of them. Alas! I am no longer a "Guide," but only a big-wig, administering justice, deciding disputes, imprisoning thieves, and assisting to hang highwaymen, like any other poor old, fat, respectable, humdrum justice of the peace in Old England.

Umritsur, April 5th, 1850.

I quite agree with all you say about Arnold. His loss was a national misfortune. Had he lived, he would have produced an impression on men's minds whose effects would have been felt for ages. As it is, the influence which he did produce has been most lasting and striking in its effects. It is felt even in India; I cannot say more than that.

You should come and live in India for five years if you wished to feel (supposing you ever doubted it) the benefit of our "established" forms of Christianity. Even the outward signs and tokens of its profession—cathedrals, churches, colleges, tombs, hospitals, almshouses—have, I am now more than ever convinced, an influence on men's minds and principles and actions which none but those who have been removed from their influence for years can feel or appreciate thoroughly. The more I think of this, the more strongly I feel the effect of mere external sights and sounds on the inner and better man. Our Gothic buildings, our religious-looking churches, have, I am sure, a more restraining and pacifying influence than is generally believed by those who are habituated to them, and have never felt the want of them. A few cathedrals and venerable-looking edifices would do wonders in our colonies. Here we have nothing physical to remind us of any creed but Islamism and Hindooism. The comparative purity of the Moslem's creed is shown admirably in the superiority in taste and form of their places of prayer. Christianity alone is thrust out of sight! A barrack-room, a ball-room, a dining-room, perhaps a court of justice, serve the purpose for which the "wisdom and piety of our ancestors" constructed such noble and stately temples; feeling, justly, that the human mind in its weakness required to be called to the exercise of devotion by the senses as well as by reason and will; that separation from the ordinary scenes of every-day life, its cares, its toils, its amusements, is necessary to train the feelings and thoughts to that state in which religious impressions are conveyed. I have not seen a church for three years and more, nor heard the service of the Church read, save at intervals, in a room in which, perhaps, the night before, I had been crushed by a great dinner party, or worn out by the bustle and turmoil of suitors. The building in which one toils becomes intimately associated with the toil itself. That in which one prays should at least have some attribute to remind one of prayer. Human nature shrinks for long from the thought of being buried in any but consecrated ground; the certainty of lying dead some day or other on a field of battle, or by a roadside, has, I have remarked, the most strange effect on the soldier's mind. Depend upon it the same feeling holds good with regard to consecrated places of worship. You may think this fanciful, but I am sure you would feel it more strongly than I do, were you to live for a time in a country where everything but religion has its living and existent memorials and evidences.

But to return to reality: I have just spent three days in Sir Charles Napier's camp, it being my duty to accompany him through such parts of the civil district as he may have occasion to visit. He was most kind and cordial, vastly amusing and interesting, and gave me even a higher opinion of him than before. To be sure his language and mode of expressing himself savor more of the last than of this century,—of the camp than of the court; but barring these eccentricities, he is a wonderful man; his heart is as thoroughly in his work, and he takes as high a tone in all that concerns it, as Arnold did in his; that is to say, the highest the subject is capable of. I only trust he will remain with us as long as his health lasts, and endeavor to rouse the army from the state of slack discipline into which it has fallen. On my parting with him he said, "Now, remember, Hodson, if there is any way in which I can be of use to you, pray don't scruple to write to me." I didn't show him his brother's[14] letter,—that he might judge for himself first, and know me "per se," or rather "per me;" I will, however, if ever I see him again.

Camp, en route to Cashmere, June 10th, 1850.

Your letter from Paris reached me just as I was preparing to start from Umritsur to join Sir Henry Lawrence, and accompany him to Cashmere. I fought against the necessity of leave as long as possible, but I was getting worse and worse daily, and so much weakened from the effects of heat and hard work acting on a frame already reduced by sickness, that I was compelled to be off ere worse came. We yesterday arrived at the summit of the first high ridge southward of the snowy range, and have now only some sixty miles to traverse before entering the valley. To me, travelling is life, and in a country where one has no home, no local attractions, and no special sympathies, it is the greatest comfort in the world. I get terribly ennuyé if I am in one place for three months at a time; yet I think I should be just as tame as ever in England, quite domestic again.

Cashmere, July 8th, 1850.

You would enjoy this lovely valley extremely. I did not know it was so beautiful, having only seen it before in its winter dress. Nothing can exceed the luxuriant beauty of the vegetation, the plane-trees and walnuts especially, except the squalor, dirt, and poverty of the wretched Cashmerians. The King is avaricious, and is old. The disease grows on him, and he wont look beyond his money-bags. There is a capitation tax on every individual practising any labor, trade, profession, or employment, collected daily. Fancy the Londoners having to go and pay a fourpenny and a sixpenny bit each, per diem, for the pleasure of living in the town. Then the tax on all shawls, goods, and fabrics, is about seventy-five per cent., including custom duty; and this the one solitary staple of the valley. The chief crops are rice, and of this, what with one half taken at a slap as "revenue," or rent, and sundry other pulls for dues, taxes, and offerings, so little remains to the farmer, that in practice he pays all, or within a few bushels of all, his produce to the King, and secures in return his food, and that not of the best. Thus the farmer class, or "Zemindars," are reduced pretty well to the state of day-laborers; yet the people are all well clothed, and fuel is to be had for the asking. What a garden it might be made. Not an acre to which the finest water might not be conveyed without expense worth naming, and a climate where all produce comes to perfection, from wheat and barley to grapes and silk. We go northwards on the 20th, first to Ladâkh and Thibet, thence to Iskardo, and then across the Indus to Gilghit, a terra incognita to which, I believe, only one European now living has penetrated. Sir Henry Lawrence is not well, and certainly not up to this trip, but he has made up his mind to go. I do not gain strength as fast as I could wish, but I fancy when once thoroughly unstrung, it takes a long time to recover the wonted tone.

We shall have another frontier war in the cold weather evidently, and I fancy a more prolonged and complete affair than the last. The cause of the only loss sustained in the last scrimmage was the panic of the Sepoys. They are as children in the hands of these Affghans and hill tribes. Our new Punjaub levies fought "like bricks," but the Hindostanee is not a hardy enough animal, physically or morally, to contend with the sturdier races west of the Sutlej, or the active and fighting "Pathàns." The very name sticks in John Sepoy's throat. I must try and see the next contest, but I do not quite see my way to it at present.

Camp, near Ladâkh, August 4th, 1850.

Who would have thought of my writing to you from Thibet. I am sitting in a little tent about eight feet long, which just takes a narrow cot, a table, and chair of camp dimensions, and my sac-de-nuit, gun, &c., and a tin box containing books, papers, and the materials for this present epistle. Under the same tree (a veritable chestnut) is Sir Henry Lawrence's tent, a ditto of mine, in which he is comfortably sleeping, as I ought to be; outside are my pets,—that is, a string of mules who accompany me in all my travels, and have also in the mountains the honor of carrying me as well as my baggage. The kitchen is under a neighboring tree; and round a fire are squatting our gallant guards, a party of Maharaja Gholab Singh's household brigade. Some of his people accompany us, and what with followers, a Moonshee or two for business, and their followers, I dare say we are a party of two or three hundred souls, of all colors and creeds,—Christians, Mussulmans, Hindoos, Buddhists, Sikhs, and varieties of each. The creeds of the party are as varied as their colors; and that's saying a good deal, when you contrast my white face and yellow hair with Sir Henry's nut-brown, the pale white parchmenty-color of the Kashmeree, the honest brunette tinge of the tall Sikh, the clear olive-brown of the Rajpoot, down through all shades of dinginess to the deep black of the low-caste Hindoo. I am one of the whitest men in India, I fancy, as, instead of burning in the sun, I get blanched like endive or celery. How you would stare at my long beard, moustache, and whiskers. However, to return from such personalities to facts. The Indus is brawling along five hundred feet below us, as if in a hurry to get "out of that;" and above, one's neck aches with trying to see to the top of the vast craggy mountains which confine the stream in its rocky channel. So wild, so heaven-forsaken a scene I never beheld; living nature there is none. In a week's journey, I have seen three marmots, two wag-tails, and three jackdaws; and we have averaged twenty miles a day.

We met a lady the other day, in the most romantic way possible, in the midst of the very wildest of glens, and almost as wild weather. She is a young and very pretty creature, gifted with the most indomitable energy and endurance (except as regards her husband, whom she can't endure, and therefore travels alone). But conceive, that for the last three months she has been making her way on pony-back across a country which few men would like to traverse, over the most formidable passes, the deepest and rapidest rivers, and wildest deserts in Asia. For twenty days she was in the extreme wilds of Thibet, without ever seeing a human habitation; making such long day's journeys as often to be without food or bedding, traversing passes from sixteen to eighteen thousand feet above the sea, where you can hardly breathe without pain; enduring pain, sickness, and every other mortal ill, yet persevering still! Poor creature, she is dying, I fear. It is evident that she is in a deep consumption, created by a terrible fall she had down a precipice, at the commencement of her journey. Well, one day we met her between this place and Cashmere. She was sixteen or twenty miles from her tents, and the rain and darkness were coming on apace; the thermometer down below fifty degrees. So we persuaded her to stop at our encampment. I gave her my tent and cot, acted lady's maid, supplied her with warm stockings and shoes, water, towels, brushes, &c., and made her comfortable, and then we sat down to dinner; and a pleasanter evening I never spent. She was as gay as a lark, and poured out stores of information and anecdotes, and recounted her adventures in the "spiritedest" manner. After an early breakfast the next morning, I put her on her pony, and she went on her way, and we saw her no more. I hope she will live to reach the end of her journey, and not die in some wild mountain-side unattended and alone.

Camp, Kulsee in Ladâkh,
August 4th, 1850.

... Until you cross the mountain chain which separates Cashmere from Tibet (or Thibet), all is green and beautiful. It is impossible to imagine a finer combination of vast peaks and masses of mountain, with green sloping lawns, luxuriant foliage, and fine clustering woods, than is displayed on the sides of the great chain which we usually call the Himalaya, but which is better described as the ridge which separates the waters of the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravee, and Beas from those of the Indus. When once, however, you have crossed this vast barrier, the scene changes as if by magic, and you have nothing but huge convulsive-looking masses of rock, tremendous mountains, glaciers, snow, and valleys which are more vast watercourses than anything else. On the more open and less elevated spots along these various feeders of the Indus, one comes to little patches of cultivation, rising from the banks of the rivers in tiers of carefully prepared terraces, and irrigated by channels carried along the sides of the hill from a point higher up the stream. Here, in scattered villages ten and twenty miles apart, live the ugliest race on earth, I should imagine, whom we call Thibetians, but who style themselves "Bhots" or "Bhods," and unite the characteristic features, or rather want of them, of both Goorkhas and Chinese. I went yesterday to see a monastery of their Llamas, the most curious sight, as well as site, I ever beheld. Perched on the summit of a mass of sandstone-grit, conglomerate pudding-stone, worn by the melting snows (for there is no rain in Tibet) into miraculous cones, steeples, and pinnacles rising abruptly from the valley to the height of 600 feet, are a collection of queer little huts, connected together by bridges, passages, and staircases. In these dwell the worthies who have betaken themselves to the life of religious mendicants and priests. They seem to correspond exactly with the travelling friars of olden times. Half stay at home to perform chants and services in their convent chapel, and half go a-begging about the country. They are not a distinct race like the Brahmins of India, but each Bhot peasant devotes one of two or three sons to the church, and he is thenceforward devoted to a life of celibacy, of shaven crown, of crimson apparel, of mendicancy, of idleness, and of comfort. They all acknowledge spiritual allegiance to the great Llama at Llassa (some two months' journey from Ladâkh), by whom the abbot of each convent is appointed on a vacancy occurring, and to whom all their proceedings are reported. Nunneries also exist on precisely the same footing. I saw a few of the nuns, and their hideous appearance fully justified their adoption of celibacy and seclusion. From their connection with almost every family, as I have said, they are universally looked up to and supported as a class by the people. Even Hindoos reverence them; and their power is not only feared, but I fancy tolerably freely exercised. Their chapel (a flat-roofed square building supported on pillars) is furnished with parallel rows of low benches to receive the squatting fathers. Their services consist of chants and recitative, accompanied by the discord of musical(?) instruments and drums, while perpetual lamps burn on the altars before their idols, and a sickly perfume fills the air. Round the room are rude shelves containing numberless volumes of religious books; not bound, but in separate leaves secured between two painted boards. I will try and send you one, if I can corrupt the mind of some worthy Llama with profane silver. They are genuine block books, strange to say, apparently carved on wood, and then stamped on a Chinese paper. The figures of their images, and their costume and head-dress (i.e., of the images), are Chinese entirely, not at all resembling the Bhot dress, or scarcely so, and though fashioned by Thibetian hands, you might fancy yourself gazing on the figures in the Chinese Exhibition at Hyde-Park Corner. Their language is a sealed book to me, of course, and though they all read and write well, yet they were unable to explain the meaning of the words they were repeating. The exterior appearance and sites of their conventual buildings reminded me very strongly of the drawings I saw in a copy of Curzon's "Monasteries of the Levant," which fell in my way for five minutes one day. I need hardly say that, in a country composed of mountains ranging from 14,000 feet upwards, the scenery is magnificent in the extreme, though very barren and savage. Apricots and wheat are ripening in the valley whence I now write (on the right bank of the Indus, some fifty miles below the town of Ladâkh), and snow is glistening on the summits above me; the roads have been very easy indeed, and enabled us to make long day's marches, from sixteen to twenty-five miles. This is more than you could do in two days in the ranges south of the Himalaya, with due regard for your own bones, and the cattle or porters which carry your traps and tents. I am very seedy, and twenty miles is more than I can ride with comfort (that I should live to say it). I have not as yet derived much, if any, benefit from change of climate.

From Ladâkh we go to Iskardo, some twelve marches lower down the Indus, where it has been joined by the water of Yarkund; and thence to Gilghit, a valley running up from that of the Indus, still lower down, and bordering on Budakhstan. We (Sir Henry Lawrence and I) then return to Cashmere; I expect it will be two more months' journey. We have already been out a fortnight, and it is very fatiguing. I am not sure that I was wise in undertaking it, but he (Lawrence) is a greater invalid than I am, and two or three men fought shy of the task of accompanying him.

Camp, Iskardo (in Little Thibet,)
August, 25th, 1850.

Only think of my sitting down peaceably to write to you from this outside world. Had I lived a hundred years ago, I should have been deemed a great traveller, and considered to have explored unknown countries, and unknown they are, only the principal danger of visiting them is past, seeing that they have been subdued by a power (Gholab Singh) with whom we have "relations." Yet if I were to cross the mountains which stare me in the face a few miles off, I should be carried off and sold for a slave. It were vain to try to compress the scenes of a two months' journey into a sheet of note-paper. We have travelled very rapidly. Few men go the pace Sir Henry Lawrence does. So we have covered a great extent of country in the past month; and seeing that the valleys are the only inhabited parts of the country, the rest being huge masses of mountains, one really sees in these rapid flights all that is to be seen of the abodes of man. We have collected a good deal of information too, which, if I had time to arrange it, might be of value. We were eleven long days' journey from Cashmere to Ladâkh, besides halts on the way at Ladâkh itself, or, as the people call it, Leh. We remained a week, and saw all the "foreigners" who came there to sell furs and silk. It is called the "Great Emporium" of trade between Yarkund and Kashgar and Llassa, and Hindostan. Fine words look well on paper, but to my unsophisticated mind the "leading merchants" seemed peddlers, and the "Emporium" to be a brace of hucksters' shops. However, 'tis curious, that's a fact, to see (and talk to) a set of men who have got their goods from the yellow-haired Russians at the Nishni-Novogorod fair, and brought them across Asia to sell at Ladâkh. It is forty days' journey, of almost a continuous desert, for these caravans from Yarkund to Leh; and there is no small danger to life and limb by the way. The current coin is lumps of Chinese sycee silver of two pounds' weight each. I bought a Persian horse for the journey, and paid for it in solid silver four pounds weight: 166 rupees, or about 16l. I shall sell it for double the money when the journey is over. Leh is a small town, of not more than 400 houses, on a projecting promontory of rock stretching out into the valley formed by one of the small feeders of the Indus. For the people, they are Bodhs, and wear tails, and have flat features like the Chinese, and black garments. The women, unlike other Asiatics whom I have seen, go about the streets openly, as in civilized countries; but they are an ugly race, and withal dirty to an absolutely unparalleled extent. They wear no head-dress, but plait their masses of black hair into sundry tails half way down their backs. Covering the division of the hair from the forehead back and down the shoulders, is a narrow leathern strap, universally adorned with rough turquoises and bits of gold or silver. The old Ranee whom we called upon had on this strap (in her case a broader one, about three fingers wide) 156 large turquoises, worth some hundreds of pounds. Over their ears they wear flaps of fur which project forward with precisely the effect of blinkers on a horse.

The climate is delightful; it never rains; the sky is blue to a fault, and snow only falls sparingly in winter, though the climate is cold, being 10,000 feet (they say) above the sea. In boiling water the thermometer was only 188°. I never felt a more exhilarating air. That one week quite set me up, and I have been better ever since. The Llamas or monks, with their red cardinal's hats and crimson robes, look very imposing and monastic, quite a travesty of the regular clergy, and they blow just such trumpets as Fame does on monuments in country churches. Jolly friars they are, and fat to a man. From Leh we crossed the mountain ridge which separates the two streams of the Indus, and descended the northern (or right) stream to this place, the capital of Bultistan or Little Thibet. It is a genuine humbug. In the middle of a fine valley, some 6,000 feet above the sea, surrounded by sudden rising perpendicular mountains 6,000 feet higher, stands an isolated rock washed by the Indus, some two miles by three quarters: a little Gibraltar. The valley may be ten miles by three, partially cultivated, and inhabited by some 200 scattered houses. There's Iskardo. There was a fort on the rock, but that is gone, and all, as usual in the East, bespeaks havoc; only nature is grand here. The people are Mussulmans, and not Bodhs, and are more human-looking, but not so well clad. It is warmer by far, much more so than it ought to be. The thermometer was at 92° in our tents to-day, a thing for which I cannot possibly account, since there is snow now on all sides of us. We go hence across the Steppe of Deo Sole towards Cashmere for four days' journey, and then strike westward to cross the Indus into Gilghit, whence we return to Cashmere by the end of September. We have been making very fast marches, varying from sixteen to thirty-two miles a day,—hard work in a country with such roads, and where you must take things with you. I enjoy it very much, however, and after a year's sickness, the feeling of returning health is refreshing. I shall return to work again by the 1st of December; but I propose paying a flying visit to Mr. Thomason in October, if possible; but the distances are so vast, and the means of locomotion so absent, that these things are difficult to achieve. I suppose I have seen more of the hill country now than ninety-nine men out of a hundred in India. Indeed, not above four Europeans have been here before. But travelling suits my restless spirit. Sir Henry and I get on famously together.