Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/136

 wonderful sight, between Sir Henry’s followers and George’s, and our carriages and the elephants. It would have made a beautiful drawing, only I can’t draw in this country. A great many people drove up from Calcutta to see it. An infantry review is rather a dull sight, but this was striking, for the Sepoys seem to me to be much finer soldiers than our people, partly from being so tall and upright, and then that I am convinced that brown is the natural colour for man—black and white are unnatural deviations, and look shocking. I am quite ashamed of our white skins.

As for the Sepoys’ soldiering I cannot speak, not knowing what they ought to do; but Sir H. Fane thinks them quite as good in all their exercises as English troops. We got home at half-past seven, when it was becoming very hot, and rested for an hour, then we had a large breakfast, and then Captain Grey and Mr. Pelham went back to Calcutta with some of the Calcuttians. Fanny and went out in the carriage, and I went in a tonjaun with George, who walked to the garden, and we sat down there till it was dusk. I tried to cheapen a beautiful common tame