Tuesday, Jan. 22.
We are more mad than ever!—at least we have got ourselves into one of those scrapes that mad people do. There is a wretched little rivulet, a thing not so big as that ditch by old Holledge’s, at Elmer’s End, which we were to have crossed this morning. This little creek, which is quite dry ten months of the year, and at the best of times is only called the Gugga, suddenly chose to rise in the night, and there is now seven feet of water in it, which puts crossing out of the question. There is only one boat, and a helpless magistrate on the other side.
The cavalry and artillery who left us yesterday will of course be stopped by the same river higher up, and Mr. C. has sent to carry off their one boat too; and in the meantime we are at a dead lock. Luckily, there is very good shooting here. I could not imagine this morning why Wright did not come to dress me after the bugles sounded, and I kept sending message after message to her, with a sort of wild idea that everybody would march, and I should be left lying in bed in the middle of this desert, with nothing to put on, and no glass to dress by; a sort of utter destitution.
The hirkaru who slept in the tent happened to speak no English, so I never understood a word of the long Hindustani speeches he kept screaming through the partitions, and at last Wright came, cold and sleepy. ‘Law, ma’am, did not you know the river was full, and we can’t go? and all the things have come back except the kitchen things, so I thought you would like a good sleep.’ Luckily, the kitchen recrossed before breakfast time.
Noodeean, Thursday, Jan. 24.
That little ditch the Gugga is quite pompous with twenty feet of water, and it has been dry for three years, and was nearly so on Monday, so we are just a day too late. We moved eight miles nearer to it merely for the love of moving, and are now at Noodeean—evidently a corruption of Noodleland, or the land to which we noodles should come. I want to leave the last camp standing, and to march backwards and forwards between the two; it would be just as good as any other Indian tour. We came on elephants to this place, careering wildly over the country, that the gentlemen might shoot; there never was anything like the tribes of quails and partridges, but it is very difficult to shoot them from an elephant. The hotty goes lumbering on, and it is just a chance whether the gun that is pointed at a hare on the ground, is not jerked up so as to kill a rock pigeon overhead. G. killed ten quails, which was more than anybody else did. Rajah Hindu Rao, who is now so habitually with us that we look upon him as a native aide-de-camp, took pains to miss, I think, that he might not seem to shoot better than G.
In the afternoon G. went out on foot with Captain X. and shot an antelope, which is really a great feat. There is a Mr. N., the magistrate to whom we rightfully belong to-day, and who ought to be wringing his hands constantly, and plying eternally between our camp and the river, a victim to remorse that he has not made a bridge of boats in time; instead of which, N.’s tents are seen in the distance the other side of the water, and he never stirs from them, and all the notice he has taken of us is a message that perhaps he had better go back and prepare for us at Hansi, as there seems little chance of our crossing for a week. We tell Mr. C. that if he had been N. this never would have happened. He has got two boats from those unhappy regiments up the river, and moreover he has succeeded to-day in recovering great part of Mrs. B.’s stolen property, her bracelets and some of her gowns, which have been buried in some Sikh village, and I fancy are not the better for the operation. The thieves have been sent up to Runjeet, and his justice is rather severe, I am afraid.
C. set off yesterday with all his clerks and establishment, and writes word that by making the villagers work all night, he has passed them all, except the camels, who detest water and will not swim. X. and A. went off this afternoon to pass our goods, and W. went in the evening.
Friday, Jan. 25.
We marched this morning, that is, we rode five miles to this wicked little Gugga, which is not forty yards wide, and yet gives us all this trouble. Captain S. overtook us half-way, and said that he had been detained by finding Wright and Jones at the last camp left without any conveyance. Their elephant, by some mistake, had been sent on to the ghaut, and all the usual spare resources had been sent away last night, so he found them walking. He sent them his elephant as soon as he could overtake it, but they had walked two miles, much to the wonder of the natives.