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 CHAPTER V

Life as a District Officer

We are now to follow James Thomason for several years, 1832 to 1837, in his life as a District Officer at Azamgarh. In the high station to which he afterwards rose, he doubtless looked back on that epoch as his golden age. He then had his wife and children with him. When he marched about in tents during the cold season, she sang to him airs from Handel and took the harp with her to beguile his evenings with music.

A most competent witness thus wrote of him: —

'To his residence at Azamgarh he always reverted with delight: and as he visited it in his annual tours, the memory of domestic happiness and official usefulness could be traced in the glistening eye and the mingled sympathies which lighted up his countenance or cast a shadow across it .'

Later on he had to draw up a report for his superiors to which he prefixed the following description of the district: —

'It is bounded on the west by the Oudh territories, on the north by the river Gogra and district of Gorakh-