Camp, Ferozepore, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 1838.
I PUT up a large packet to you on Saturday, which will accompany this; but I was shy of making it thicker. Sunday, the whole camp was glad of a halt; the sandy roads tire all the people much.
There was a very large congregation at church, I was told; we have so many troops with us now, and Y.’s preaching is in great reputation. On Monday we marched eleven more miles with the same dusty result. The chief incident was, that G. was to have tried an Arabian of W. O.’s, which is a perfect lamb in a crowd, and was intended to officiate at the great review ‘as is to be;’ but the syce by mistake gave him another horse of W.’s, which pulls worse than G.’s own horse. F., who was riding with him, assured him that the Arabian had such a tender mouth that it was only chafing because he held it too tight: he loosened the bridle—away went the horse like a shot, and away went twenty-five of the body-guard after him, thinking it was his lordship’s pleasure to go at that helter-skelter pace: away went M., who is on duty; in short, nothing could be finer than the idea; but they all pulled up when they saw how it was. G.’s horse galloped on two miles for its own amusement, and then he made it go another for his, and finally changed it for his own horse, whose merits rose by comparison. I was in the carriage behind, and W. came up in the greatest fuss—having heard of the mistake—and just as he was saying the horse would run away, two of the guard came back to say it had done so; so he had the pleasure of a good prophecy.
Yesterday we came twelve miles. My health is neither better nor worse, so I came on in the carriage; all the others rode the last four miles, and were met by M. and all his staff at the town of Ferozepore. G. let me go on half a mile in advance, in order to avoid the dust, which must have shocked General R., who never lets even a little dog precede him in his march.
I passed him and his suite by the side of the road, drawn up according to the strictest rule—a very large body of cocked hats. General R. in front, alone, then a long row of general officers, then a longer row of a lower grade. It was too awful and military a moment for speech. I was not sure whether it was not irregular to kiss my hand; however, I ventured on that little movement, which was received with a benign ‘clignotement de l’œil’ signifying ‘Wrong, but I forgive it for once.’
I got in three-quarters of an hour before the rest, who came a foot’s pace, and General E. told F. they always marched that fashion—General R. first, they behind—a trot never allowed.
General R. was uncommonly affable, and came and paid me a visit in my tent, where I was lying down, all dust and fatigue, and wishing for breakfast. Sir W. C., too, came in for a moment, in the highest glee, not so fat as he was at Calcutta—we expected he would have been twice the size. I told him he was grown thin, and he went back to his favourite story of the courtiers telling George IV., when he was at his fattest, ‘Your Majesty is regaining your figure!’
We had a most interesting envoy from General A., who is employed by Runjeet in Peshawur, and who wrote to each of us his polite French regrets that he could not come here, but he sent ‘un très petit paquet’ of the shawls we had commissioned him to get worked in Cashmere, when we saw him in Calcutta, and also the Cashmere gowns he had promised. He declared that there never were such failures; that he had sent seven or eight ‘surveillants’ to Cashmere, ‘mais on m’a tout gâté.’
An hour after, there arrived, instead of the ‘petit paquet,’ a very large pillow, or rather a small ottoman, brought in by two men, and then we had such cutting and nicking and tearing away of oilcloth and muslin and shawl paper, and at last arrived at the treasures. Four shawl dresses, four magnificent square shawls, and four long scarfs to match the dresses—but the fineness and the brightness of the whole concern it is impossible to describe. One gets to value shawls only by their fineness at last, and we have seen nothing like these. They have been a year and a half in making. We have ascertained the prices of these shawls, which are very cheap considering their beauty. The dresses were at Calcutta promised us as presents; but under the circumstances of our being in Runjeet’s country, and A. one of his generals, we want to pay for them, which Captain E. has undertaken to do. I now say once more, as I have often said before, I really don’t want any more shawls, but yet I do always when they come in my way.
In the afternoon Sir W. C., B., W., M., and two or three more, went on elephants to compliment the Maharajah, and met half-way Kurruck Singh, his son and supposed heir, Ajeet Singh, our Simla friend, and Sujeyt Singh, the great dandy of the Punjâb, with several others coming to compliment G. The Maharajah had the best of the bargain.