Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/93

 have not strength enough; we are only left a shade weaker and a shade yellower, and if a healthy European lands it makes us all sneeze. B has escaped it, owing to his great serenity and being constantly engaged in plucking ahingas. I have another bunch of feathers for you, and some day I’ll freight a ship with them.

Our first and best energies are devoted towards making a clinquant figure of his Excellency, in order that he may shine in the eyes of the native princes; and I take it he will make a pretty considerable figure seen through a long vista of embroidered punkahs, peacocks’ feathers, silver sticks, spearmen, &c., and two interesting females caracoling on their elephants on each side of him.

I have at last made listen to reason about my howdah, and it is a model of comfort. There have been unpleasant doings at Napâl—very! They make me rather sick. The physician there was suspected of having poisoned a little prince, intending to poison the queen. He would not own to any such intention, upon which the king took his wife and children and tortured them to make him con-