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 II.

TRAVELS IN CAMP.

December 12.

THERE is no commanding eminence from which to survey the whole of the Durbar Camp. The Ridge is not lofty enough, and if it were the morning haze and the afternoon dust would limit the view. To see the Canvas City which has arisen on the plain outside the walls of Delhi, it is necessary to travel through it and gaze upon it in sections. The newcomer, having first stuck his head outside his tent to make quite sure that the morning sun is really above the horizon, sallies forth with the ingenuous idea of "riding round the camp"; and it is not until you have absolutely lost yourself amid a wilderness of tents that you realise what you have undertaken. You plough your way along a road deep in sand, with plenty of big flints scattered about to give variety to the surface. The fifty miles of new roads, by the way, are at present of very varying quality. There will be a mile of road in faultless condition, at the end of which you find yourself embedded in a sand bank. You drag through that and turn a corner, to be confronted by a rope, the legend "Road Closed," and in the middle distance a stray steam-roller. But every one says