The climate added its depressing influence; there was no going to the hills then, and as the weary months dragged on, the young stranger became more and more dispirited and hopeless.  Such was my case.  I had only been four months in India, but it seemed like four years.  My joy, therefore, was unbounded when at last my marching orders arrived.  Indeed, the idea that I was about to proceed to that grand field of soldierly activity, the North-West Frontier, and there join my father, almost reconciled me to the disappointment of losing my chance of field service in Burma.  My arrangements were soon made, and early in August I bade a glad good-bye to Dum-Dum.

[Footnote 1:  In the fifty-seven years preceding the Mutiny the annual rate of mortality amongst the European troops in India was sixty-nine per thousand, and in some stations it was even more appalling.  The Royal Commission appointed in 1864 to inquire into the sanitary condition of the army in India expressed the hope that, by taking proper precautions, the mortality might be reduced to the rate of twenty per thousand per annum.  I am glad to say that this hope has been more than realized, the annual death-rate since 1882 having never risen to seventeen per thousand.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER II. 1852

Bengal Horse Artillery—­Incidents of the journey—­New Friends

When I went to India the mode of travelling was almost as primitive as it had been a hundred, and probably five hundred, years before.  Private individuals for the most part used palankins, while officers, regiments, and drafts were usually sent up country by the river route as far as Cawnpore.  It was necessarily a slow mode of progression—­how slow may be imagined from the fact that it took me nearly three months to get from Dum-Dum to Peshawar, a distance now traversed with the greatest ease and comfort in as many days.  As far as Benares I travelled in a barge towed by a steamer—­a performance which took the best part of a month to accomplish.  From Benares to Allahabad it was a pleasant change to get upon wheels, a horse-dak having been recently established between these two places.  At Allahabad I was most kindly received by Mr. Lowther, the Commissioner, an old friend of my father’s, in whose house I experienced for the first time that profuse hospitality for which Anglo-Indians are proverbial.  I was much surprised and amused by the circumstance of my host smoking a hookah even at meals, for he was one of the few Englishmen who still indulged in that luxury, as it was then considered.  The sole duty of one servant, called the hookah-bardar, was to prepare the pipe for his master, and to have it ready at all times.

My next resting-place was Cawnpore, my birthplace, where I remained a few days.  The Cawnpore division was at that time commanded by an officer of the name of Palmer, who had only recently attained the rank of Brigadier-General, though he could not have been less than sixty-eight years of age, being of the same standing as my father.