It was very pleasant seeing the patriarchal relations between the Commissioner and the villagers.  He understood them and their customs thoroughly; they trusted him and loved him as their official father.  I fancy that this type of Indian Civil servant, knowing the people he has to deal with down to the very marrow of their bones, has become rarer of late years.  The Brahmin clerk was a very intelligent man, and spoke English admirably, but I took a great dislike to him, noting the abject way in which the natives fawned on him.  Colonel Erskine had to discharge him soon afterwards, as he found that he had been exploiting the villagers mercilessly for years, taking bribes right and left.  From much experience Colonel Erskine was an adept at travelling with what he termed “a light camp.”  He took with him a portable office-desk, a bookcase with a small reference library, and two portable arm-chairs.  All these were carried in addition to our baggage and bedding on coolies’ heads, for our sleeping-places were seldom more than fifteen miles apart.

The Commissioner’s old Khansama had very strict ideas as to how a “Sahib’s” dinner should be served.  He insisted on decorating the table with rhododendron flowers, and placing on it every night four dishes of Moradabad metal work containing respectively six figs, six French plums, six dates, and six biscuits, all reposing on the orthodox lace-paper mats, and the moment dinner was over he carefully replaced these in pickle-jars for use next evening.  We would have broken his heart had we spoiled the symmetry of his dishes by eating any of these.  It takes a little practice to master bills of fare written in “Kitmutar English,” and for “Irishishtew” and “Anchoto” to be resolved into Irish-stew and Anchovy-toast.  Once when a Viceroy was on tour there was a roast gosling for dinner.  This duly appeared on the bill-of-fare as “Roasted goose’s pup.”  In justice, however, we must own that we would make far greater blunders in trying to write a menu in Urdu.

The Kumaon district is beautiful, not unlike an enlarged Scotland, with deep ravines scooped out by clear, rushing rivers, their precipitous sides clothed with dense growths of deodaras.  In the early morning the view of the long range of the snowy pinnacles of the Himalayas was splendid.  I learnt a great deal from wise old Colonel Erskine with his intimate knowledge of the workings of the native mind, and of the psychology of the Oriental.

There is something very touching in the fidelity of Indian native servants to their employers.  Lady Lansdowne returned to India eighteen years after leaving it, for the marriage of her son (who was killed in the first three months of the war) to Lord Minto’s daughter, and I accompanied her.  One afternoon all the pensioned Government House servants who had been in Lord Lansdowne’s employment arrived in a body to offer their “salaams” to my sister.  They presented a very different appearance