"On the tomb is seen,
Not what they were, but what they should have been."
If a life of stern and undeviating integrity, and a practice of the duties enjoined to man by Him who made the stars, afford hopes of immortality, Sydney, you alone, of those with whose characters I have been conversant, possess an irreproachable title.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The war was decided, in one day, by the actions of Maharajpore and Punniaz.
[6] Waistbelt.
ARRIVAL IN CALCUTTA—DEPARTURE FOR THE SOUTH-WESTERN FRONTIER—ARRIVAL AT MERUT—STATE OF AFFAIRS ON THE NORTH-WESTERN FRONTIER—THE SIKH MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT—THE BRITISH POSITION.
After two years' absence, early in October, 1845, I disembarked from one of those monster steamers at Calcutta, by whose assistance the months occupied in our former intercourse with India are reduced to weeks, and the probability of arrival, not only to a day, but almost to an hour. Not ten years ago I remember hearing an eminent lecturer in London prove to the complete satisfaction (apparently) of a crowded amphitheatre, that steam communication with India, via the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf, was impossible. We were told that the monsoons, the shoals in the Red Sea, and the tornadoes which rush from the gullies across its fatal waters, were too much even for the iron heart of a steamer to encounter; and should any fortunate passengers escape these evils, the sands of the desert between Suez and Alexandria were prepared to overwhelm the caravan of presuming adventurers.