CHAPTER XI

Summary

We have had a Sunday halt, and some bad roads, and one desperate long march. A great many of the men here have lived in the jungles for years, and their poor dear manners are utterly gone—jungled out of them.

Luckily the band plays all through dinner, and drowns the conversation. The thing they all like best is the band, and it was an excellent idea that, of making it play from five to six. There was a lady yesterday in perfect ecstacies with the music. I believe she was the wife of an indigo planter in the neighourhood, and I was rather longing to go and speak to her, as she probably had not met a countrywoman for many months; but then, you know, she might not have been his wife, or anybody's wife, or he might not be an indigo planter. In short, my dear Mrs. D., you know what a world it is—impossible to be too careful, &c.

We never stir out now from the camp, there is nothing to see, and the dust is a little laid just in front of our tents. We have had a beautiful subject for drawing the last two days. A troop of irregular horse joined us at Futtehghur. The officer, a Russaldar—a sort of sergeant, I believe—wears a most picturesque dress, and has an air of Timour the Tartar, with a touch of Alexander the Great—and he comes and sits for his picture with great patience.