The Viceroy’s tour being abandoned, Colonel Erskine, the Commissioner for the Kumaon district, invited me to accompany him on his own official tour.  It was through very difficult country where no wheeled traffic could pass, so we were to ride, with all our belongings carried by coolies.  I bought two hill-ponies the size of Newfoundland dogs for myself and my “bearer,” and we started.  The little animals being used to carrying packs, have a disconcerting trick of keeping close to the very edge of the khudd, for experience has taught them that to bump their load against the rock wall on the inner side gives them an unpleasant jar.  These little hill-ponies are wonderfully sure-footed, and can climb like cats over dry water-courses piled with rocks and great boulders, which a man on foot would find difficult to negotiate.  The rhododendrons were then in full flower, and the hills were one blaze of colour.  We were always going up and up, and as we ascended, the deep crimson rhododendron flowers of Naini Tal gradually faded to rose-colour, from rose-colour to pale pink, and from pink to pure white.  It was a perfect education travelling with Colonel Erskine, for that shrewd and kindly old Scotsman had spent half his life in India, and knew the Oriental inside out.  The French have an expression, “se fourrer dans la peau d’autrui,” “to shove yourself into another person’s skin,” and therefore to be able to see things as they would present themselves to the mind of a man of a different race and of a different mentality, and from his point of view.  All young diplomats are enjoined to cultivate this art, and some few succeed in doing so.  Colonel Erskine had it to perfection.  On arriving in a village he would call for a carpet, and a dirty cotton dhuree would be laid on the round.  He would then order a charpoy, or native bed, to be placed on the carpet, and he would seat himself on it, and call out in the vernacular, “Now, my children, what have you to tell me?” All this was strictly in accordance with immemorial Eastern custom.  Then the long line of suppliants would approach, each one with a present of an orange, or a bunch of rhododendron flowers in his hand.  This, again, from the very beginning of things has been the custom in the East (cf. 2 Kings, chap. viii, vers. 8, 9:  “And the King said unto Hazael, Take a present in thine hand, and go, meet the man of God....  So Hazael went to meet him, and took a present with him").  Colonel Erskine was a great stickler for these presents, and as they could be picked off the nearest rhododendron bush, they cost the donor nothing.

The outpouring of grievences and complaints then began, each applicant always ending with the two-thousand-year-old cry of India, “Dohai, Huzoor!” ("Justice, my lord!”) The old Commissioner meanwhile listened intently, dictating copious notes to his Brahmin clerk, and at the conclusion of the audience he would cry, “Go, my children.  Justice shall be done to all of you,” and we moved on to another village.