Page:Arabia, Egypt, India - A Narrative of Travel.djvu/21



FTER a delightful year in England, publishing my last book, in the gay season of 1875, and being fêtéd by all my friends and relations enough to spoil me for ever, my husband, finding he had still six months' leave, asked me what I should like to do. I consulted my heart, and it answered, "India." He had been nineteen years in the Bombay Army, and eight of them on active service through all those exciting years from '42 to '49, on the staff of Sir Charles Napier, whose fortunes as a soldier he may be said to have followed. Indeed, the old General's fate seems to have overshadowed him, and later on, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe had a like effect in the political line, of whose school, and whose fervent disciple in Eastern affairs, he was. Do not start. This book is not going to be "weighted with a grievance." This only serves to explain that I had never seen India, and that I proposed that he should take me there and show me all his old quarters. He liked the idea; so we got a map, cut India down the middle lengthways, from Cashmere to Cape Comorin, and planned out how much we could manage to see on the western side, leaving the eastern for another year; we were already too far advanced in the season for such an expedition.

The 4th December, 1875, was remarkable for being as black as midnight during the livelong day: thick snow lay upon the ground and covered every object; dense, murky fog filled the air, through which a dull red, lurid gleam just rendered the darkness visible—and horrible. In any sunny land we should have feared an earthquake, or the last judgment, but here