Lahore, Sept. 3d, 1849.
On my arrival here I found your note of 18th June. You may imagine how wild I was with pleasure at seeing your handwriting again, as I had been deeply anxious since the arrival of my father's and George's letters of the 4th June. These brought me the first tidings of our darling's death. Happily I saw no newspaper by that mail, and the black edges first startled me from the belief that you were all well and happy. The blow was a bitter one indeed, and its utter suddenness was appalling. Indeed, the prevailing impression on my mind for days was simple unbelief of the reality of that sweet child's actual death. I have been so long alone,—home has been for so long a time more a pleasant dream than a reality,—I have been for so many a weary day, as it were, dead to you all, and the sense of separation has grown so completely into one's being, that I find it difficult to separate that which it is possible to see again from that which is impossible. Thus it seems to me incredible that any greater barrier can sever me from this darling child than that ever-present one which divides me from all of you. Can you understand this? I know it to be a delusion, and yet I cannot shake it off. Yet 'tis a good delusion in one way. It deadens the sense of grief which the full realization of her death would overwhelm me with.
I have been unfortunate again, and had a second sharp attack of fever since my arrival. I am about again, but not able to work. Sir H. Lawrence is very unwell; I fear that his constitution is utterly broken down, and that he will either have to go away from India for two years or more, or that another hot season will kill him. He is ten years older in every respect than he was during our Cashmere trip in 1846. This is a hard, wearing, dry climate, which, though preferable to Hindostan, is destructive to the weak and sickly. It is quite sad to feel how, little by little, one's strength and muscle and energy fade, and how one can perceive age creeping in upon one so early.
Lahore, Sept. 24th, 1849.
You know that I have left the Guides (alas!) and have been transformed into a complete civilian, doomed to pass the rest of my career in the administrative and executive duties of the Government of this last acquisition of the English in India. To tell the truth, I had much rather have remained with the Guides; a more independent, and very far pleasanter life, and I think one that will in the end be more distinguished. However, I was guided by Mr. Thomason's and Sir H. Lawrence's advice, and must take the consequences. It would be difficult to define or explain the exact nature of my new calling, but in brief, you will comprehend that in their respective districts the Deputy Assistant Commissioners perform the whole of the judicial, fiscal, and magisterial duties which devolve upon the Government of a country in Europe, with the addition of collecting from the cultivators and landholders the rent of all lands under cultivation and pasture, and the duties which in Europe devolve on an owner of landed property. Police, jails, quarter-sessions, committals to prison, jury, judge, excise, stamps, taxes, roads, bridges, ferries, woods and forests, and finally rent! think what these imply, and you will form some idea of the employment of an official in the Punjaub under the "Board of Administration." I have not yet dipped very deep into this turbid stream of ever-recurring work, since the great amount of arrears consequent on the break-up of one Government, and the establishment of another, including the paying-up and discharge of vast civil and military establishments, have rendered it necessary to employ any available head and pair of hands for some months at head-quarters. The army has fallen to my share, and I have to examine into the claims of innumerable fine old hangers-on of the Lahore State to grants or pensions, to record their rights, and report on them for the decision of Government. Then there are upwards of 2,000 old women, wives and mothers of soldiers killed in war, whom I have to see and pay the pittance decreed by their masters. Lord Dalhousie, and his secretaries and officials, are stern and hard taskmasters, and are not unworthily represented by the new Board, the only merciful member of which (Sir H. Lawrence) is left in a minority, and is, moreover, too ill to do much.
Camp, Patankote, Jan. 21st, 1850.
I at length got away from Lahore on the 7th. I had been ordered merely to seek change of air, but Sir H. Lawrence was starting on a long tour of inspection, and offered me the option of accompanying him, and doing a little work by the way, which I very much preferred; so here we are, after visiting the sacred city of Umritsur, and the scenes of my last year's adventures in Butala, Deenanuggur, and Shahpoor, all between the Ravee and Beas; and are now on our way to the mountain stations of Kangra, &c. We then go to the westward again, and I hope to see
Our coursers graze at ease,