“Half my journey was by daylight, and all that I saw during that time disappointed me grievously.  It is amazing how small a part of the country is under cultivation.  Two-thirds at least, as it seemed to me, was in the state of Wandsworth Common, or, to use an illustration which you will understand better, of Chatmoss.  The people whom we met were as few as in the Highlands of Scotland.  But I have been told that in India the villages generally lie at a distance from the roads, and that much of the land, which when I passed through it looked like parched moor that had never been cultivated, would after the rains be covered with rice.”

After traversing this landscape for fifteen hours he reached the town of Arcot, which, under his handling, was to be celebrated far and wide as the cradle of our greatness in the East.

“I was most hospitably received by Captain Smith, who commanded the garrison.  After dinner the palanquins went forward with my servant, and the Captain and I took a ride to see the lions of the neighbourhood.  He mounted me on a very quiet Arab, and I had a pleasant excursion.  We passed through a garden which was attached to the residence of the Nabob of the Carnatic, who anciently held his court at Arcot.  The garden has been suffered to run to waste, and is only the more beautiful for having been neglected.  Garden, indeed, is hardly a proper word.  In England it would rank as one of our noblest parks, from which it differs principally in this, that most of the fine trees are fruit trees.  From this we came to a mountain pass which reminded me strongly of Borradaile, near Derwentwater, and through this defile we struck into the road, and rejoined the bearers.”

And so he went forward on his way, recalling at every step the reminiscence of some place, or event, or person; and, thereby, doubling for himself, and perhaps for his correspondent, the pleasure which the reality was capable of affording.  If he put up at a collector’s bungalow, he liked to think that his host ruled more absolutely and over a larger population than “a Duke of Saxe-Weimar or a Duke of Lucca;” and, when he came across a military man with a turn for reading, he pronounced him “as Dominic Sampson said of another Indian Colonel, ’a man of great erudition, considering his imperfect opportunities.’”

On the 19th of June he crossed the frontier of Mysore; reached Bangalore on the morning of the 20th and rested there for three days in the house of the Commandant.

“On Monday, the 23rd, I took leave of Colonel Cubbon, who told me, with a warmth which I was vain enough to think sincere, that he had not passed three such pleasant days for thirty years.  I went on all night, sleeping soundly in my palanquin.  At five I was waked, and found that a carriage was waiting for me.  I had told Colonel Cubbon that I very much wished to see Seringapatam.  He had written to the British authorities at the town of Mysore, and an officer had come from the Residency to show me all that was to be seen.  I must now digress into Indian politics; and let me tell you that, if you read the little that I shall say about them, you will know more on the subject than half the members of the Cabinet.”