full, sanguine man.  His strength was great; and, I imagine, had he not retired with me, I should never have been able to force my way.  I was at this time sensible of no pain, and little uneasiness; I can give you no better idea of my situation than by repeating my simile of the bowl of spirit of hartshorn.  I found a stupor coming on apace, and laid myself down by that gallant old man, the Rev. Mr. Jervas Bellamy, who laid dead with his son, the lieutenant, hand in hand, near the southernmost wall of the prison.  When I had lain there some little time, I still had reflection enough to suffer some uneasiness in the thought that I should be trampled upon, when dead, as I myself had done to others.  With some difficulty I raised myself, and gained the platform a second time, where I presently lost all sensation; the last trace of sensibility that I have been able to recollect after my laying down, was my sash being uneasy about my waist, which I untied, and threw from me.  Of what passed in this interval, to the time of my resurrection from this hole of horrors, I can give you no account.”

There was plenty to see in Calcutta, but there was not plenty of time for it.  I saw the fort that Clive built; and the place where Warren Hastings and the author of the Junius Letters fought their duel; and the great botanical gardens; and the fashionable afternoon turnout in the Maidan; and a grand review of the garrison in a great plain at sunrise; and a military tournament in which great bodies of native soldiery exhibited the perfection of their drill at all arms, a spectacular and beautiful show occupying several nights and closing with the mimic storming of a native fort which was as good as the reality for thrilling and accurate detail, and better than the reality for security and comfort; we had a pleasure excursion on the ‘Hoogly’ by courtesy of friends, and devoted the rest of the time to social life and the Indian museum.  One should spend a month in the museum, an enchanted palace of Indian antiquities.  Indeed, a person might spend half a year among the beautiful and wonderful things without exhausting their interest.

It was winter.  We were of Kipling’s “hosts of tourists who travel up and down India in the cold weather showing how things ought to be managed.”  It is a common expression there, “the cold weather,” and the people think there is such a thing.  It is because they have lived there half a lifetime, and their perceptions have become blunted.  When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not valuable.  I had read, in the histories, that the June marches made between Lucknow and Cawnpore by the British forces in the time of the Mutiny were made weather—­138 in the shade and had taken it for historical embroidery.  I had read it again in Serjeant-Major Forbes-Mitchell’s account of his military experiences in the Mutiny —­at least I thought I had—­and in Calcutta I asked him if it was true, and he said