Page:Sir Thomas Munro and the British Settlement of the Madras Presidency.djvu/48

 40 SIR THOMAS MUNRO

I have made here. My daily walks were usually from four to twelve miles, which I thought a good journey in Scotland. You see children of five or six years of age following the camp, and marching fifteen or sixteen miles a day with the same ease as their fathers.

' I have almost as much local attachment to Vellore as to Northside ; for it is situated in a delightful valley, containing all the varieties of meadows, groves, and rice-fields. On every side you see romantic hills, some near, some distant, continually assuming new forms as you advance or retire. All around you is classic ground in the history of this country; for almost every spot has been the residence of some powerful family, now reduced to misery by frequent revolutions, or the scene of some important action in former wars.

' Not with more veneration should I visit the field of Marathon, or the Capitol of the ancient Romans, than I tread on this hallowed ground. For, in sitting under a tree, and while listening to the disastrous tale of some noble Moorman, who relates to you the ruin of his fortune and his family, to contemplate by what strange vicissitudes you and he, who are both originally from the North of Asia, after a separation of so many ages, coming from the most opposite quarters, again meet in Hindustan to contend with each other — this is to me wonderfully solemn and affecting.'

Yet, while suffering such privations as he has thus