F. arrived yesterday. W. O. writes word that he has just killed his thirteenth tiger.
Saturday, March 30.
This must go to-day, G. says. It is a shockingly thin concern, but it is not three weeks since the last went, and, as I tell you, a second Simla year journalised would inevitably throw you into a deep slumber.
Simla, Wednesday, April 3, 1839.
I feel rather cold and hungry without my Journal. I have got such a habit of telling you everything, that somehow I cannot hinder myself from bestowing my tediousness upon you. I rather think I am like Mr. Balquwhidder, who found that the older he grew, and the more his memory failed, the more easy it was for him to preach a long sermon, only his congregation would not listen to it. You are my congregation. Our present set of gentlemen are so larking, I hope they will contrive to keep themselves and Simla alive this year. I think I told E. they had advertised a pigeon-shooting match for seven o’clock on the 1st of April, there not being a pigeon within twenty miles of this place.
Mr. C. arrived at the place, which was a mile from any house, armed with two guns, in a regular shooting dress, and followed by three hirkarus to pick up the birds, and he was met by one of X.’s servants with a note, enquiring ‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ As he hates getting up before nine, he had some merit in taking it good-humouredly.
There are several very pretty people here, but we can hardly make out any dinners. Most of the ladies send their regular excuse, that they do not dine out while Captain So-and-so is with the army. Very devoted wives, but if the war lasts three years, they will be very dull women. It is wonderful how they contrive to get on together as well as they do. There are five ladies belonging to the regiment, all with families, who have now been living six months in one small house, with only one common sitting-room, and yet they declare they have not quarrelled. I can hardly credit it—can you?
Friday.
The recoil from the plains to the dry, sharp air has a shocking effect on the household. Captain Z. has been very ill since Monday, Captain Q. knocked up with fever, Dr. D. ditto; a very severe case. F.’s ayah tumbled down a hill, and cut her knee dreadfully. Rosina and her husband and ten more servants all ill with fever. Mars a bad headache; Giles ditto. St. Cloup, a confirmed case of liver complaint. That puts us all in a great fuss; the instant he complains we all think of our dinners, and are full of little attentions to him; we are now trying to hope that gout may come out, but the fact is, they have all knocked themselves up by fancying that, because they are in the hills, they may go out in the sun without an umbrella, and nobody ever can, with impunity. If Shakspeare ever said a wrong thing, it was that the sun ‘looks upon all alike.’ It is anything but alike; he looks uncommonly askance at you, and quite full at us. The band played on Wednesday in a new place we have made for it in our garden. Such a view of the snowy range! and such a pretty spot altogether! and all the retired ladies come to solace themselves with a little music, and to take a little tea and coffee and talk a little.
W. O. has killed his seventeenth tiger. I had a letter from him to-day. They had been after a great man-eater, who has carried off seven or eight people lately, and the Thanadars of the villages around had begged them to try and kill it. They took with them a Mr. P., an engineer they found making a bridge, who had never been out hunting before; and lent him an elephant and two guns. The first day they saw the tiger at a great distance, and Mr. A. and W. took care not to fire for fear of losing his track, but they ‘presently heard a tremendous shouting, and bang, bang, with both guns. This was P. at least half a mile off, and on his coming up, he said he had seen the tiger in the distance, and it was “dreadfully exciting work.” The next thing we heard of the tiger was upon my elephant’s head, but he was shaken off directly, and after two or three charges, killed. About five minutes after he was dead, up comes Mr. P. in an awful state of excitement, with a small umbrella neatly folded up in his hands, and carried like a gun. “Am I too late? Is he dead?" “Yes, but where are your guns?" “Good heavens! I thought this was them. I must have thrown them away in my excitement and taken this instead.” And so he had—and both A.’s and my guns which we had lent him were found in the jungles, after some trouble.’