Cuhia.
This is a collection of native huts, where there is a deposit of coals, but there was also a dear native baboo who stepped out with a parcel of letters, one from G., saying that the December overland had arrived, but as he did not think there was any chance of the letters finding us, he had only sent one or two; and he mentioned any little news he had collected.
He was quite right in his principle, but as the letters have found us, what a pity he did not send your packet, which he mentions.
It is a horrid thing; a great liberty; but G., in his Grand Mogul way, opens all our letters, and is evidently revelling in yours and the girls’ journals. Indeed, he says so; and adds he is so hurried and worried he had not time to find the journals. Such impertinence!
Barackpore, Friday, March 13.
There! this is not a journal this tune; it must turn into a letter, for I have had no time. We arrived at Calcutta late in the evening of Sunday, the 1st March. We ran down a native boat in the dark, and got a great fright from the screaming of the men, who were however all picked up immediately, and natives, one and all, can swim for two or three hours without fear.
We found W. O. in his dressing-gown, and G. in bed; however, he got up and came to us; he complains of being very much over-worked, and of being over-bitten by the musquitoes. They are dreadful; still there is something in the cleanliness and solidity of the house, and in its space, that looks very attractive after the tents and boats. It is lucky we have had that march as a set-off, otherwise the change from Simla would be too shocking.
Do not you remember the story my father used to tell us, when we were children, of how his friend the old Duke of Marlborough went to dine with a neighbour, a poor clergyman, whose house was small, whose fires were low, and whose dinner was bad, and when the Duke drove back to Blenheim and entered that magnificent hall, he said with a plaintive sigh, ‘Well! home is home, be it never so homely.’ So say I, on coming back to this grand palace, from those wretched tents, and so shall I repeat with still greater unction when we arrive at our dear little villa at Kensington Gore. If it should please God that we ever do so, mind that you and your girls are on the lawn to greet us.
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