Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 2.djvu/361

 pleased to notice our preventive movements to the north-west in her speech on the prorogation of the House. The 16th Lancers are amongst the fortunate who are actually to return. All speak of the campaign as most distressing from climate and privation of all sorts, and the popular king, the beloved of his subjects, turns out to be as popular as Louis le Desiré. In February 1839, M. le Général Allard, that most agreeable and gentlemanlike man, died at Peshawar. How much I regretted that circumstances prevented my accepting his escort and invitation to visit Lahore! I should have enjoyed seeing the meeting between the Governor-General and the old Cyclops Runjeet Singh.

We have received a letter from a friend in the 16th Lancers; he says, the thermometer is 108° in tents; that they have suffered greatly, both man and horse, for want of supplies; that camp followers are on quarter, and the troops on half allowance, receiving compensation for the deficit. The army set out on their march from our provinces in the highest spirits, dreaming of battle, promotion, and prize-money,—they are now to a man heartily sick of a campaign which promises nothing but loss of health—no honour, no fight, no prize-money, no promotion.

The following are interesting extracts:—

"Jellalabad, Oct. 28th, 1839.

"Soon after the army left Shikerpūr in the end of February, our difficulties commenced; and we no sooner got on the limits of what is laid down in the maps as a marshy desert, than we suffered from a very great scarcity of water, and were obliged to make long and forced marches to get any: through the Bolan Pass we got on tolerably well; the road winds a great part of the way up the shingly bed of a river, and the halting places were like the sea-beach. But no sooner had we arrived at Quetta, in the Valley of Shawl, than the native troops and camp followers suffered in earnest; the former were placed on an allowance of half a seer, and the latter of a quarter daily; and grain was selling at two seers for a rupee.