of course, and the channel of the river be reduced to a size proportionate to its constant supply.  Dear reader, you are very difficult to please.  My descriptions you call slow, my imaginings frivolous, science dry.  Jokes are feeble and personalities tedious morality is stale, religion is cant.  What, how can I write?  You have had a taste of all and if you are not content the fault is—­well, let me be on the safe side—­either yours or mine.

AUGUST 23rd, Sunday.—­We continued to progress last night by moonlight long after the sun had set, and started again very early this morning, so that the Tukh-t-i-Suliman (Soloman’s Throne) and Fort are now visible, and I expect to reach Sreenuggur before noon.  It is faster work floating down the current than towing against it.  At Sreenuggur I found several letters waiting for me, and amongst them a large “Official,” which I tore open with eager haste; thinking it might be a reply to my application to be sent home.  It was ——.  Well, you will never guess—­an urgent enquiry as to what language I could speak and write fluently beside English.  I have answered this question some half dozen times since I have been in the service, but they never get tired of asking it.  The date of my arrival in India is another favourite and constantly recurring enquiry, and this might lead me to give you a dissertation upon the theory and practice of Red-tapeism, with a special consideration of the amount of stationery thereby wasted, and its probable cost to the Government.  It would perhaps, be very interesting to you, but to any one who is at all connected with it, the subject is only one of weariness and disgust—­weariness at the unproductive labour entailed—­disgust at the utter folly of the proceedings.  So I pass it by, leaving some one who is willing to sacrifice his feelings, or more probably some one who knows nothing whatever about it to furnish the much needed expose; it is customary to cry it down but it is an acknowledged evil, the custom has never been fully and fairly explained to outsiders or it must have given way before the burst of public indignation which such an explanation would have created.  I have again encamped in the Chinar Bugh, but not quite in the old position as a better place was unoccupied.  Indeed I had my pick of the whole, for there is now nobody here but myself.  I received news (in my letters) that a field force had left Pindee to operate against some of the hill tribes between Peshawur and Abbottabad—­ruffians who are always giving trouble, and who occasioned the inglorious Umbeylla campaign a few years ago.  I informed my “boy” that there was going to be some hard fighting, and his reply was “With our troops, Sir?” Our troops! good heavens! a black man speaking to me of “our troops.”  It is customary I know to call these Asiatics our fellow subjects, but I never before had the fact so forcibly brought before me.