of Bumbo Khan, a brother of the once famous Rohilla chief Gholam-Khadir.  Though past eighty years of age, and weighing upwards of twenty stone, he had not lost, any more than the equiponderant colonel, his taste for the good things of this world; and our traveller, on partaking of the Nawab’s hospitality, records with infinite zest the glories of a peculiar preparation of lamb, called nargus, or the narcissus.  But, alas! the reminiscences of the nargus were less grateful than the fruition, and the remorse of the colonel’s guilty stomach (as poor Theodore Hooke, or some one else, used to call indigestion) continued to afflict him all the way to Hurdwar; and may probably account, by the consequent irritation of his temper, for various squabbles in which he was involved on the route.

The great fair of Hurdwar was in full swing at the colonel’s arrival, with its vast concourse of Hindoo devotees from all parts of India, to whom it is in itself a spot of peculiar sanctity, besides lying in the way to the shrine of Gungotree, (the source of the Ganges,) in the Himmalaya—­its crowds of merchants and adventurers of all sorts, even from Uzbek Tartary and the remote regions of Central Asia—­Seiks by thousands from the Punjab, with their families—­Affghan and Persian horse-dealers—­and numerous grandees, both of the Hindoo and Moslem faith, who repair hither as to a scene of gaiety and general resort.  The colonel found quarters in the tent of a friend employed in the purchase of horses for government, and seems to have entered with all his heart into the humours of the scene; his description of which, and of the varied characteristics of the motley groups composing the half million of human beings present, is one of the most graphic and picturesque sketches in his work.  “Huge heaps of assafoetida, in bags, from the mountains beyond Cabool—­tons of raisins of various sorts—­almonds, pistachio nuts, sheep with four or five horns—­Balkh[8] cats, with long silken hair; of singular beauty—­faqueers begging, and abusing the uncharitable with the grossest and most filthy language—­long strings of elderly ladies, proceeding in a chant to the priests of the Lingam, to bargain for bodily issue—­Ghat priests presenting their books for the presents and signatures of the European visitors—­groups of Hindoos surrounding a Bramin, who gives each of them a certificate of his having performed the pilgrimage”—­such are a few of the component parts of the scene; but the colonel’s attention seems to have been principally fixed upon the horses, and the tricks of the dulals or brokers, to whom the purchase is generally confided, it being almost hopeless for an European to make a personal bargain with a native dealer.  But among the greatest curiosities in this way were some tortoiseshell ponies—­for we can call them nothing else—­a peculiar race from Uzbek Tartary, which we never remember to have heard of before.  “They were under thirteen hands high, and the most curious compound