Page:Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India etc. (Volume III.).djvu/395

Rh a Transylvanian, but who is shrewdly suspected of being a Russian spy, was, when I was in Kemaoon, arrested by the commandant of our fortresses among the Himalaya mountains, and after all our pains to exclude foreigners from the service of the native princes, two chevaliers of the legion of honour were found, about twelve months ago, and are still employed in casting cannon and drilling soldiers for the Seik Raja, Runjeet Singh. This you will say is no more than we should be prepared to expect, but you probably would not suppose (what I believe is little, if at all, known in Russia itself,) that there is an ancient and still frequented place of Hindoo pilgrimage not many miles from Moscow, or that the secretary of the Calcutta Bible Society received, ten months ago, an application (by whom translated I do not know, but in very tolerable English,) from some priests on the shore of the Caspian sea, requesting a grant of Armenian Bibles. After this you will be the less surprised to learn that the leading events of the late wars in Europe (particularly victories) were often known, or at least rumoured, among the native merchants in Calcutta before Government received any accounts from England, or that the suicide of an English minister (with the mistake, indeed, of its being Lord  instead of the ,) had become a topic of conversation in the “burrah bazar,” (the native exchange) for a fortnight before the arrival of any intelligence by the usual channels. "With subjects thus inquisitive, and with oppor- a