* I do not wish to brag of my style of writing, or to pretend that my genius as a writer has not been equalled in former times; but if, in the works of Byron, Scott, Goethe, or Victor Hugo, the reader can find a more beautiful sentence than the above, I will be obliged to him, that is all—­I simply say, I will be obliged to him.——­G.  O’G.  G., M. H. E. I. C. S., C. I. H. A.

“But away with melancholy reminiscences.  You may fancy what a figure the Irregulars cut on a field-day—­a line of five hundred black-faced, black-dressed, black-horsed, black-bearded men—­Biggs, Glogger, and the other officers in yellow, galloping about the field like flashes of lightning; myself enlightening them, red, solitary, and majestic, like yon glorious orb in heaven.

“There are very few men, I presume, who have not heard of Holkar’s sudden and gallant incursion into the Dooab, in the year 1804, when we thought that the victory of Laswaree and the brilliant success at Deeg had completely finished him.  Taking ten thousand horse he broke up his camp at Palimbang; and the first thing General Lake heard of him was, that he was at Putna, then at Rumpooge, then at Doncaradam—­he was, in fact, in the very heart of our territory.

“The unfortunate part of the affair was this:—­His Excellency, despising the Mahratta chieftain, had allowed him to advance about two thousand miles in his front, and knew not in the slightest degree where to lay hold on him.  Was he at Hazarubaug? was he at Bogly Gunge? nobody knew, and for a considerable period the movements of Lake’s cavalry were quite ambiguous, uncertain, promiscuous, and undetermined.

“Such, briefly, was the state of affairs in October, 1804.  At the beginning of that month I had been wounded (a trifling scratch, cutting off my left upper eyelid, a bit of my cheek, and my under lip), and I was obliged to leave Biggs in command of my Irregulars, whilst I retired for my wounds to an English station at Furruckabad, alias Futtyghur—­it is, as every twopenny postman knows, at the apex of the Dooab.  We have there a cantonment, and thither I went for the mere sake of the surgeon and the sticking-plaster.

“Furruckabad, then, is divided into two districts or towns:  the lower Cotwal, inhabited by the natives, and the upper (which is fortified slightly, and has all along been called Futtyghur, meaning in Hindoostanee ’the-favorite-resort-of-the-white-faced-Feringhees-near the-mango-tope-consecrated-to Ram’) occupied by Europeans. (It is astonishing, by the way, how comprehensive that language is, and how much can be conveyed in one or two of the commonest phrases.)

“Biggs, then, and my men were playing all sorts of wondrous pranks with Lord Lake’s army, whilst I was detained an unwilling prisoner of health at Futtyghur.

“An unwilling prisoner, however, I should not say.  The cantonment at Futtyghur contained that which would have made any man a happy slave.  Woman, lovely woman, was there in abundance and variety!  The fact is, that when the campaign commenced in 1803, the ladies of the army all congregated to this place, where they were left, as it was supposed, in safety.  I might, like Homer, relate the names and qualities of all.  I may at least mention some whose memory is still most dear to me.  There was—­