Page:Warren Hastings (Trotter).djvu/198

192 ment of Oudh. His colleagues supported Bristow against the Nawáb-Wazír. Wheler at last gave in, and in January, 1784, Bristow was recalled. In the middle of the next month Hastings set out on his last tour up-country to Benares and Lucknow.

By that time his stanch friend Impey was on his way home to defend himself triumphantly before the Commons from all the charges which Burke and Francis brought against him. By that time also he had taken a fond farewell of Mrs. Hastings; whose failing health had caused him deep anxiety for many months past. To part, even for a year, from one who, in Gleig's words, had long been 'his friend, his confidant, his solace, his supreme delight,' was for Hastings a bitter trial. He had hoped to share her homeward voyage; but duty held him a year longer to his thankless post. The peace with Tipú was still to settle; the quarrel with Macartney still raged; a famine had broken out in Upper India which threatened to reach Bengal, and the affairs of Oudh called for his personal supervision.

At Patná he met his kinsman, Captain Turner, whom he had despatched a year before on a mission to the infant Lama of Tibet. On his journey from Baxár to Benares, he was saddened by frequent traces of long prevailing drought, and 'fatigued' by piteous complaints from the sufferers who thronged his path. In the city of Benares he found matters well ordered under the control of Muhammad Raza Khán, while the surrounding