Saturday, Feb. 26.
We had a melancholy catastrophe last night. There has been a great deal of pilfering in the camp the two last days, which has been the case with every great camp near Delhi, and our people were unluckily more awake than usual. A thief was seen running off with one of the servants’ cooking pots, and pursued. A syce of Mr. T. caught hold of him. The thief turned round and stuck his knife into the man and killed him on the spot. He was dead before they could even fetch Dr. D. The thief is taken, but nobody is ever hanged in this country. Mr. T., who has been agent here for twenty-two years, takes it as a personal affront that we should have been robbed in his district, though I should have thought the affront lay the other way.
Paniput, Feb. 28.
Delhi turned out a very unwholesome place. All the servants have been taken with attacks of fever and sickness; the sudden hot days after the cold weather disagree with them. Our camp has grown much larger. There are more hangers-on. Mrs. —— has taken charge of a little niece and two nephews who lost their mother suddenly, and she is taking them up to the hills—I never saw such sickly little things. I see another little European girl every morning on the line of march, who has evidently nobody but bearers to take charge of her, probably going up to a school at Mussoorie, where parents who are too poor to send children home now send them. I forget whether I told you a story Mr. T. told me about the way in which children travel here, and which strikes me as very shocking, and would probably strike you more. I believe I have told it to you twice already in hopes of making your motherly hair stand on end. He said a palanquin was brought to his house containing three little children—a little girl nine years old and two smaller brothers. They were going up to Mussoorie, had been travelling three days, and had about a week’s more journey. They had not even their names written on a piece of paper, or a note to the magistrates of the district, but were just passed on from one set of bearers to the other. You know the bearers are changed every eight miles like so many post horses, and it constantly happens on a dâk journey that the bearers get tired, or the fresh set are not at their posts, and the palanquin is put down on the road and the traveller left to help himself. The bearers who brought these children to Mr. T.’s, said they thought the children were tired, and so they had brought them to an European house for a rest. Mr. T. had them washed and dressed, and fed them and kept them half a day, when he was obliged to send them away for fear they should lose their dâk. He said they were very shy, and would hardly speak, but he made out their names and gave them notes to other magistrates, and some months afterwards he saw them at school at Mussoorie; but it is an odd way of sending children to school. I should like to see you packing off your three youngest boys for the chances of these naked half savages taking them and feeding them and looking after them on the road, without even a servant to attend to them.
When we came into camp this morning we found Mr. ——, whose turn it had been to come on with the guard of honour, perfectly desperate. His tent had been entirely stripped in the night, he and his bearers remaining in a profound sleep while the thieves cut entirely away one side of the tent, and carried off over his head a large camel-trunk and all his other boxes, with his sword, gun, and pistols. It was a sad loss for a poor lieutenant in the army, but luckily the police recovered most of his things in the course of the day, except, as he says with a most sentimental sigh, ‘a few rings of no value in themselves, but of value to me, and a few chits.’ The magistrate, Mr. ——, treats with the greatest contempt the idea of recovering any sentimental goods. ‘I assure you,’ he says, ‘the dacoits at Pannyput have no idea of sentiment.’ Probably not—but that does not console Lieut. —— for the loss of his chits.
Kurnaul, March 2.
We arrived here yesterday; a great ugly scattered cantonment, all barracks, and dust, and guns, and soldiers; and G. had a levée in the morning, and we were ‘at home’ in the evening; and the officers of four regiments, with their wives and daughters, all came and danced. The fashions are even again behind those of Delhi. Mrs. V. appeared in a turban made I think of stamped tin moulded into two fans, from which descended a long pleureuse feather floating over some very full sleeves. Mrs. Z. did not aspire to anything fanciful, but was simply attired in a plain coloured gown made of a very few yards of sarcenet. We are going to dine with the General to-day—a dinner of sixty people.
Yesterday as we were stepping over the street to luncheon, there appeared an interesting procession of tired coolies carrying boxes—our English boxes that had come plodding after us from Allahabad. I was in hopes Mr. D.’s bonnets would have come out of one of them, but we heard in the evening that they are at least a month off, and in the meantime the unpacking of these was immense fun. There were two boxes of books, and I had just come to an end of the last set, and now there is Mrs. Gore’s ‘Stokeshill Park,’ and ‘My Aunt Dorothy,’ and some French novels, and, above all, dear Charles Lamb’s Letters, which I have been sighing for and have begun upon instantly. I cannot imagine what number of hill-bearers will take our goods up to Simla. Major J. has written for 1,500, and they are already at work taking the first division of goods up. Our camp will break up almost entirely in a few days. We three, with two aides-de-camp, the doctor, and one secretary, are going through the Dhoon, a sort of route that will not admit of a large party. It is a very pretty road, and likely to be cooler than the actual plains.
The rest of the camp and most of the servants will pursue the straight road. I long to get into the hills more than ever. It is grown so very hot now, quite as bad as Calcutta in May. I believe we shall not be able to take Wright and Jones this route, which will make them very unhappy. St. Cloup told me yesterday that he had at last had a letter from Madame St. Cloup, which had made him very happy, and that she was in an excellent place with a relation of ours. Poor woman! she little knows what a faithless man he is. However, he bought her a beautiful gold chain at Delhi, and he said that now he had had this letter, he had ‘quelque envie de lui acheter des boucles d’oreilles,’ but that he thought it would be better to take them home. It would make her more glad to see him.