In 1891 the Viceroy had selected the Kumaon district for his usual official spring tour, and all arrangements had been made for this.  As my sister was feeling the heat of Calcutta a great deal, she and I preceded the Viceroy to Naini Tal in the Kumaon district, as it stands at an altitude of 6500 feet.  The narrow-gauge railway ends at Kathgodam, fifteen miles from Naini Tal, and the last four miles to the hill-station have to be ridden up, I should imagine, the steepest road in the world.  It is like the side of a house.  People have before now slipped over their horses’ tails going up that terrific ascent, and I cannot conceive how the horses’ girths manage to hold.  Naini Tal is a delightful spot, with bungalows peeping out of dense greenery that fringes a clear lake.  As in most hill-stations, the narrow riding tracks are scooped out of the hillsides with a perpendicular drop of, say, 500 feet on one side.  These khudd paths, in addition to being very narrow, are so precipitous that it takes some while getting used to riding along them.  A rather tiresome elderly spinster had come up to Naini Tal on a visit to a relative, and was continually bewailing the dangers of these khudd paths.  She had hoped, she declared, to put on a little flesh in the hills, but her constant anxiety about the khudds was making her thinner than ever.  A humorous subaltern, rather bored at these continual laments, observed to her:  “At all events, Miss Smith, you’ll have one consolation.  If by any piece of bad luck you should fall over the khudd, you’ll go over thin, but you’ll fall down plump—­a thousand feet.”

The very evening that Lord Lansdowne arrived for his projected tour, the news of a serious outbreak in Manipur was telegraphed.  The Viceroy at once decided to abandon his tour and to proceed straight to Simla, to which the Government offices had already moved, and where his presence would be urgently required.  Lord William Beresford, the Military Secretary, a prince of organisers, at once took possession of the telegraph wires, and in two hours his arrangements were complete—­or as an Anglo-Indian would put it, “he had made his bundobust.”  The Viceroy and my sister were to leave next morning at 6 a.m., and Lord William undertook to get them to Simla by special trains before midnight.  He actually landed them there by 11 p.m.—­quite a record journey, for Naini Tal is 407 miles from Simla, of which 75 miles have to be ridden or driven by road and 66 are by narrow-gauge railway, on which high speeds are impossible.  There were 6500 feet to descend from Naini, and 6000 feet to ascend to Simla, but in India a good organiser can accomplish miracles.