That Brahmin is better, and Dr. D. thinks he will live. We had a melancholy letter to-day, with an account of poor Mr. S.’s death. He died of abscess on the liver—of India, in fact. I think his health had begun to fail before we left Calcutta, but we had not heard of his being ill till a week ago. I am very sorry on all accounts. He was an excellent man, and very much to be loved; and then she is left with eleven children, of whom three only are provided for. It is melancholy to think how almost all the people we have known at all intimately have in two years died off, and that out of a small society. None of them turned fifty; indeed, all but Mr. S. between thirty and forty. Mr. C., who is with us, was saying yesterday that he had been stationed a few years ago at Delhi. ‘I liked it; we were a very large party of young men, but I am the only survivor.’ And he is quite a young man.
That Brahmin is very much better, and Dr. D. has no doubt he will recover. The Brahmins’ diet leaves them so little susceptible of fever, that if they do not sink under an operation they recover rapidly. G. held a sort of durbar to-day, in which he gave the soubadars (or native officers) of the regiment which has escorted us, shawls and matchlocks, the same to the cavalry, and to the native officers of our bodyguard. They have all conducted themselves most irreproachably during this long march, and they are a class of men who ought to be encouraged. There were about thirty of them in all; and at the end, after praising them and their respective colonels, he poured attar on their hands and gave them paun, which they look upon as the greatest distinction.
They were extremely pleased, and all our servants were quite delighted, and said that ‘our lordship was the first that had ever been so good to natives.’ I am glad it went off so well, for the idea, between ourselves, was mine; and as there is a great jealousy and great fear about liberality, it was disapproved of at first by the authorities, but G. took to it after a day or two, and I mentioned it surreptitiously to ——, who manages that part of the department. G. is quite of opinion that there is too much neglect of meritorious natives, and that it is only marvellous our dominion over them has resisted the system of maltreatment, which was even much more the fashion than it is now. Even now it is very painful to hear the way in which even some of the best Europeans speak to those Rajpoot princes, who, though we have conquered them, still are considered as kings by their subjects, and who look like high-caste people.
Sabathoo, Monday, April 2.
On Saturday evening, at Pinjore, we gave a farewell dinner to all the camp, and went after dinner to some beautiful gardens belonging to the Puttealah rajah. He is not here himself, but he had had these gardens lit up for us, and the fountains were playing, and all the best nautch-girls had been sent from Puttealah, and altogether it was a very magnificent fête.
People may abuse nautching, but it always amuses me extremely. The girls hardly move about at all, but their dresses and attitudes are so graceful I like to see them. Their singing is dreadful, and very noisy.
We went on to Barr the next afternoon; it is such a hot place that we wished to have as few hours of it as possible. We found —— nearly exhausted by the labour of passing on our goods; every camel trunk takes on an average eight men, and we have several hundred camel trunks of stores alone. Colonel T., the political agent, had, however, arrived with a reinforcement of coolies, and everything was progressing. That Brahmin is so much better that Dr. D. sent him home from here, and we gave him all that he required for his expenses. We were called at half-past three this morning—is not that almost too shocking? human nature revolts from such atrocities—and at four we were all stowed away in our jonpauns and jogging by torchlight up some perpendicular paths, which might be alarming, but I could not keep awake to see.
We were four hours coming to Sabathoo. Colonel T. provided us with a house. We have had sundry alarms that our beds were gone straight to Simla. Some of the servants knocked up, but upon the whole it has been a less alarming expedition than Sir G. K. said we should find it. Colonel T. has asked all Sabathoo, consisting of nine individuals, to meet us, which we could have spared, considering we are to be up at half-past three again to-morrow.
Simla, April 3.
Well, it really is worth all the trouble—such a beautiful place—and our house, that everybody has been abusing, only wanting all the good furniture and carpets we have brought, to be quite perfection. Views only too lovely; deep valleys on the drawing-room side to the west, and the snowy range on the dining-room side, where my room also is. Our sitting-rooms are small, but that is all the better in this climate, and the two principal rooms are very fine. The climate! No wonder I could not live down below! We never were allowed a scrap of air to breathe—now I come back to the air again I remember all about it. It is a cool sort of stuff, refreshing, sweet, and apparently pleasant to the lungs. We have fires in every room, and the windows open; red rhododendron trees in bloom in every direction, and beautiful walks like English shrubberies cut on all sides of the hills. Good! I see this is to be the best part of India.