agony for many days.  It turned out that the wretched woman hated the unwonted confinement of her new life, and was determined to get away, but was too much afraid of her husband to say so.  He wanted her to remain for the sake of the high pay this class of servant receives, so it appeared to the woman that her only chance of freedom was to get rid of the child, and to carry out her purpose she first attempted to set fire to the cradle, and finding this did not succeed, she pulled some pieces of cane off the chair upon which she was sitting, and shoved them down the child’s throat.  She was, as my wife described her, a pretty, innocent, timid-looking creature, to whom no one would ever have dreamt of attributing such an atrocity.  The boy was made extremely delicate for several months by this misadventure, as his digestion had been ruined for the time being, but eventually he completely recovered from its effects.

In September the C.B. was conferred upon me for the Lushai Expedition.  Lord Napier informed me of the fact in a particularly kind little note.  I was very proud of being a member of the Bath, although at the time a brevet would have been a more useful reward, as want of rank was the reason Lord Napier had given for not allowing me to act as Quartermaster-General, on Lumsden being temporarily appointed Resident at Hyderabad.

We began our usual winter tour in the middle of October.  At Mian Mir I made the acquaintance of the Adjutant of the 37th Foot, the late Sir Herbert Stewart, who was then a smart, good-looking subaltern, and I recollect his bemoaning bitterly his bad luck in never having had a chance of seeing service.  How little at that time could it have been anticipated that within twelve years he would see hard fighting in Africa, and be killed as a Major-General in command of a column!

We visited several of the stations in the Punjab, and spent a few days at Jamu as guest of the Maharaja of Kashmir, who treated us royally, and gave us some excellent pig-sticking; and on the 21st December we joined Head-Quarters at Lawrencepur for a large Camp of Exercise, to be held on the identical ground which I had selected for the camp which Sir Hugh Rose proposed to have eleven years before.

Lord Napier of Magd[=a]la did much to improve the efficiency of the army by means of Camps of Exercise.  He held one at Delhi in the winter of 1871-72, and the Camp of which I am writing was most successful and instructive.  No Commander-in-Chief ever carried out inspections with more thoroughness than did Lord Napier of Magd[=a]la.  He spared himself no trouble.  On the hottest day he would toil through barrack after barrack to satisfy himself that the soldiers were properly cared for; Europeans and Natives were equally attended to, and many measures conducive to the men’s comfort date from the time he was in command in India.

At the close of this camp Lumsden, who had returned to his appointment from Hyderabad, gave up the Quartermaster-Generalship for good.  We had been greatly thrown together during the twenty-one years I had been in India, and my wife and I were very sorry to bid farewell to him and Mrs. Lumsden.  He was succeeded by Edwin Johnson, pending whose arrival I was now allowed to officiate.