THE CASHMERE GATE.

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the gateway, and others as best they might, did they come pouring in. "It was terrible hot work, and we lost a many men, just here, sir," quoth my guide hoarsely, and I hoped he was going to wax communicative, but recollections of his lost comrades seemed to crowd thick and fast upon him as he spoke; perhaps the shadowy outlines of the "old familiar faces" dimmed his eyes; at any rate, he rubbed them, and as he did so I felt that he was telling me the story of the assault with a simple eloquence surpassing that of words or rounded phrases, and I seemed to see the ditch beneath me filled with bleeding forms, and to hear the cannon thundering out, with feverish mouths, their harsh and never-varying song; to see the crowded mass of camp-followers, flocking in the footsteps of our victorious troops; to see, pressing on, fighting yet, the shattered, but undaunted column, its track marked with blood and corpses; to see the struggle, sharp and murderous, round the magazine, the winning, step by step, and inch by inch, of the desperate way; the pelting bullets falling in quick showers from the surrounding houses; the rich plunder, as it was borne away by half-maddened soldiers; the six days' fierce fighting about the palace and in the crowded city, and narrow stifling streets; the isolated and desperate conflicts with knots of fanatics, and, lastly, the wild excitement and confusion of victory, the mad joy, so seasoned, though, with sorrow ;-all this, vivid and life-like, seemed to be passing before my eyes as I stood upon the bastion hard by the Cashmere Gate.

So, in visiting the most interesting spots in Delhi, I passed two days pleasantly enough, filling up the spare moments by holding a sort of little levies of jewellers, shawl merchants, and others who flock to the dâk-bungalow like vultures round a dead body, enticing travellers, whom they generally find very easy prey, to invest in studs, brooches, and rings, or "Cashmere shawls," made in Manchester.

CHAPTER XXXI.

Delhi to Umballa-Kalka-Travelling by "Jampan”—The Himalayas-Hurreepore-Scenery by the way— Simla— How time is passed there-I leave Simla to return to England-Cessation of the Company's rule in India-The Queen's proclamation-Farewell to India, and to the Reader.

ON again along the Grand Trunk Road, as level and monotonous as ever, through Kurnaul, once our frontier station, to Umballa,* where you change the jolting gharree for a palanquin, and so travel on to Kalka. This little village lies at the foot of the hills; and here again your mode of conveyance is changed, and you enter a "jampan :" a barbarous machine, which looks like a four-post bedstead, curtains and all, which has been condemned to do penance as a sedan-chair, and which is carried by four men. In this you are unable to lie down, or to sit with the slightest degree of comfort, being constantly in dread of tilting over; so that it may be compared somewhat to the sensation of being in an "out-rigger" on a breezy day, though scarcely as comfortable!

* Having referred, in depreciatory terms, to the hotel at Delhi, let me here, as a sort of set-off, mention that the one at Umballa, kept by Mr. Parker, is exceedingly good, being by far the best I had entered since leaving Calcutta.

But all discomfort is forgotten when you get among the magnificent scenery of the Himalayas ; perhaps, after a residence on the parched plains, one of the most enjoyable moments of one's life. The ascent, at first, is tolerably easy, winding round and round mountains, on the sides of which the road is cut in the most serpentine manner. It was before sunrise when I left Kalka, and as we ascended, and day broke, the scene was most lovely; and very soon I was sensible of a delightful change in the atmosphere. A cool, almost cold wind, which seemed to breathe fresh life and health into one, came sighing down towards me; and I inhaled every breath of it with a relish only to be appreciated by those who have known what it is to pant and swelter for months beneath the burning sun of India, sucking it in as the wretch who is dying of thirst does the cup of cold water which the hand of charity holds out to him; while it wafted with it the most delicious fresh smell as of new-mown hay, and flowers, and clover, seeming, with Epicurean delight, to extract the sweetest of the fragrance from the rich foliage which clothes the mountain sides, as it swept and whistled down them; the dear country smell, reminding one of old England, and its pleasant shady lanes, and fragrant, sunny hay-fields. More and more lovely grew the scenery; high, magnificent hills crowding in confused beauty together, their tips gilded by the rising sun, their sides still wrapped in shadow, and with the dew yet lingering and glistening on the leaves; well-wooded, too, and with high grass and bushes, and flowers which waved over one's winding path; and now

and again a glimpse of the parched plains below, over which the almost sulphurous heat is now rising like a misty cloud. Here, on one's right, an abrupt rise of some 400 or 500 feet, covered with tangled brushwood; there, to one's left, a steep descent of the same distance, with, at the bottom, a narrow gully, through which pours impetuously a mountain torrent, sparkling and bubbling, prancing and dancing along over the stones and rugged bits of fallen rock, and hurrying (oh, foolish little stream!) away towards the sultry plains below.

The villages are few and far between, on narrow ledges on the mountain side, or wherever they can find a level bit of ground to establish themselves upon; which it is difficult to do, for it is a peculiarity, indeed, a fault, in the Himalayas, that these mighty hills do not enclose any widespreading, fertile valleys, but are all crowded together in such a way, that their bases, connecting with one another, form only narrow, rocky passages, or pathways for the mountain stream such as I have just mentioned, much of their grandeur being necessarily lost by this want of contrast. It is all hill, and looks, as one surveys it from some favourable spot, like a rough, boisterous sea, composed of mountain-tops and steep green banks, hill-sides and precipices; a sea in which, far as the eye can reach, away to the dim, purple hill-tops, which form the broken horizon, you can distinguish no calm, no repose; all is tempestuous, and huge billows of mountains come rolling majestically one over the other, each hill seeming, as it were, to grow out of the side of its neighbour.