Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/321

 *room in high health and spirits: at seven that evening he lay exhausted and apparently dying. When at Waterloo he was shot through the lungs, and recovered. It was one of those remarkable instances of recovery from a severe gun-shot wound, and as that had gone through the lungs, the breaking of the blood-vessel was a fearful occurrence.

21st.—Colonel Arnold is still in great danger, but his friends indulge in hopes of his recovery. Two field-officers called to take leave of me. I asked, "What is this war about, the fear that the Russians and Persians will drive us into the sea?" Colonel Dennie answered, "The Government must have most powerful reasons, of which we are ignorant; it is absurd to suppose that can be the reason of the war; why send us there? let them fag themselves out by coming to us; we shall get there easily enough, but how shall we return? We may be cut up to a man." His companion agreed with him, and this was the general opinion of the military men of my acquaintance. The old 16th marched from Meerut on the 30th October. Never was there a finer body of men under the sun. Their route is marked out across a desert, where all the water they will get for man or beast for three days they must carry with them in skins. Why they have been ordered on such a route the secret and political department alone can tell—the men ask if it be to take the shine out of them: there is another road, said to be good, therefore it is difficult to understand the motive of taking them across the desert to Shikarpore.

My boats being ready at Ghurmuktesur Ghāt, I started dāk to join them; on my arrival a fine breeze was blowing, a number of vessels of every description were at anchor; the scene was picturesque, and my people were all ready and willing to start. Messrs. Gibson and Co. of Meerut have furnished me with two large flat-bottomed country boats, on each of which a house is built of bamboo and mats, which is well thatched; the interior of the one in which I live is divided into two large rooms, and has two bathing-rooms; the floor is of planks, covered with a gaily-coloured sutrāengī, a cotton carpet; and the inside is fitted up with white cloth—sometimes the rooms are fitted up with the