in the army?  These questions have been running in my head and occasionally a more delicate one obtruded.  Shall I marry, and if so, when and whom, and here, where all my thoughts are revealed, I must needs confess that now at twenty-nine years of age, I begin to weary of single blessedness, and long for a fair, loving, and loveable companion.  Now my gentle lady reader, here is a chance for you, if you are content with honest love without adoration, faithfulness without romance; for my romantic days have passed.  I have learnt the sober realities of life, and among them the truth of God’s declaration that it is not good for man to be alone.  The Saturday Review in recent articles, “The Girl of the Period, &c.,” holds out a poor prospect for the would be benedict, and I fear there is much truth in the assertion that the majority of our young women are husband hunting, that they make matrimony their one great object, and will condescend to any means whereby to attain the personal independance given them by that position, that these marriages without love, only prompted by selfish considerations, are followed by a total neglect of all wifely duties—­nay more, that even maternal care and tenderness have nearly ceased to exist.  It is a sad picture, and sternly drawn.  The well-known power of the paper is put forth in its highest degree, and withering sarcasm, and bitter contempt accompany its stern reproofs.  Yet there is a final wail of despair at the unlikelihood of any change for good being effected.  This evil like most others is of our own making.  We men no longer marry while young, but when middle-aged or with grey hairs beginning to show, a man desires a wife, he will most likely choose one five and twenty years his junior.  The girl often marry thus because she cannot get a husband of her own age, and a very few years lost will doom her to perpetual spinsterhood.  It is necessarily a marriage without love, a lucky one if there be respect.  Girls have learnt that it is useless to bestow their affections where nature would have them, and and it is scarcely a matter for surprise that they should in consequence endeavour to repress them altogether.  Moral for my own use.  Marry while I am young, or not at all.

AUGUST 1st.—­To Wangut nine miles rough and hilly walking.  I lost the path once, and had a long scramble before I regained it.  Though not a pleasant march the scenery is very fine and picturesque.  Wangut lies up a short and contracted valley, an offshoot of the Scind which is a much larger one, and the mountains around it are very grand especially at the head of the valley, I put up large coveys of grey partridge on the road.  I have come here for the purpose of visiting some mines two miles further on, and I intend to halt to-morrow and walk to see them.  There is a great row going on while I write this, the natives appear unwilling to furnish supplies (milk, eggs, &c.,) and my boatman who has accompanied me is applying his stick freely by way of persuasion.