Culpee, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 1840.

THIS is our great place of dispersion. G., A., and Mars start to-morrow for Calcutta, Lord Jocelyn for Agra, C. for Lucknow, and we on our march to Allahabad. M., H., and Colonel E. take up G.’s dÂk the next day—that is, they inherit his bearers and follow him as fast as they can, and the rest of the camp go with us. We found Mrs. C., Mrs. N., and the Y.s, all in their separate boats at the ghaut here, which was a curious coincidence, as everybody started on a different day, and a great delight to X.

Thursday, Jan. 30.

Lord Jocelyn passed two hours in my tent, talking over old days. He is very amusing and pleasant, and rubs up a number of London recollections.

We all had an early dinner at three, and then he started in a dhoolie. There were no spare palanquins in camp, and a dhoolie is a sort of bed with red curtains, that sick soldiers are carried in, very light, but squalid-looking.

The street was full of officers, and soldiers, and servants; everybody in camp assembled to wish G. good-bye, and Lord Jocelyn came out in a flowered dressing-gown and slippers, with a cigar and a volume of a French novel, and took possession of this wretched bed, and seemed quite delighted with it. His servant followed on a camel. G. and A. then set off in the shut carriage, which is to take them two stages, Mars with palanquins having gone on in the morning. G.’s going is a great grief. It is somehow impossible to live without him here, and then India is such a horrid place. People who care about each other never ought to part for a day; it is all so uncertain, and communication is so difficult. F. and H. made a short march of five miles, just across the Jumna, and C. came on with all the rest and passed the evening with us, and then set off for his appointment at Lucknow. He is a great loss in every way, and has been with us for four years nearly. M., Colonel E., and H. we left on the other bank; they are to follow G. to-morrow.

Friday, Jan. 31.

Captain D. is in a considerable fuss. Colonel —— seems never to have recollected that though so many individuals have left the camp, their property and servants remain there, just the same, and that the public officers, with all the clerks, must march on; so there is the same want of sentries. He ordered off half of the regiment that had come to escort us to Allahabad, and Colonel B., who only joined last night, sent word that he had only 300 men to do the work of 1,000. The sentries are withdrawn from all the private tents, and all the silver howdahs and waggon loads of shawls, jewellery, arms, &c., of the Tosha Khanna, are brought into the middle of the street. I should have liked to have robbed it for fun; in the first place, for the value of the goods, and then it would have put D., L., and the baboo into such a state of horror.

Nobody was robbed but Mr. ——, who always is, and looks as if he always must be; he seems so helpless, and dangles his hands about in a pair of bright yellow gloves, quite new, and too large for him, and says, ‘It is very odd how the devils of dacoits persecute me.’

The other day they stole his horse: he had put five police to guard it, and the thief just cut the ropes, jumped on its back, and rode off, and has never been heard of since. It is very convenient stealing a white horse in this country, because the natives always paint them, sometimes in stripes like zebras, and sometimes in zigzags, and always give them scarlet, or orange tails, and orange legs; so they disguise a stolen one instantly.

Mr. T. is such a prim boy; he is very gentlemanlike-looking, and seems very amiable, but he is certainly prim. His uniform is so stiff he cannot turn his head round, and he talks poetically whenever he does speak.

F. declares he quoted to-day something from Mr. Thomson’s ‘Seasons.’ I wish when he gives us his arm that he would shut it up again. He sticks it out almost akimbo, so that it is impossible to hook on with any certainty.

Ghautumpore, Sunday, Feb. 2.

We have halted here to-day to allow more troops to come and protect the general property.

I heard from G. from Futtehpore. He says he can sleep very well in his palanquin; he might call it rather a slow conveyance, but thinks of us marching, and blesses his own fate. Mr. Beechey, the painter at Lucknow, sent me to-day a miniature of G., done by a native from his picture. It is a shocking caricature, but a very little would make it like. I can make the alteration myself; and if I can get it smoothed up at Calcutta, I will send it home, and the girls can hang up ‘the devoted creature’ in their room. Mr. Beechey says he has sent me the original sketch in oils to Calcutta. It was an excellent picture, and I hope he has not touched it since.

Jehannabad, Monday, Feb. 3.

I heard again from G. from Allahabad; in fact, he is very little in his palanquin. All the magistrates and collectors of the different districts had placed their carriages and buggies at his disposal along the road that they knew he must go; so he gets on very fast, and then rests all the hot part of the day in a bungalow, which gives time for his palanquin to come up. He had gone thirty miles at one spell in a carriage drawn by four camels.

Futtehpore, Thursday, Feb. 6.

I have missed three days. They are all so exactly alike and so more than ever tiresome now G. is gone; I cannot get on at all without him. There is nobody else in this country who understands me, and you keep standing there such miles off, that you are not of the least use when I want you most. Then your letters did not come last month. You cannot imagine what companions your letters are, and I want one so very much just now.

We have come back to-day, to one of our early halting places two years ago, so that looks as if we really were coming to an end of our wanderings in the wilderness, and I am sure it is high time we did. All the chairs and tables are tumbling to pieces, the china is all cracked, the right shoe of my only remaining pair has sprung a large hole, the brambles that infest the jungles where we encamp have torn my gown into fringes, so that I look like a shabby Pharisee, and my last bonnet is brown with dust. I am obliged to get Wright to darn a thing or two surreptitiously; the tailors think it wrong and undignified to mend. Altogether I can conceive nothing pleasanter than coming to a completely fresh set out at Calcutta.

General E. passed through camp to-day in his palanquin, and stopped for two hours and came to see us. I recollect him so well with the F.s and G.s as ‘Elphy Bey,’ and never had made out it was the same man till a sudden recollection came over me a week ago. He is in a shocking state of gout, poor man!—one arm in a sling and very lame, but otherwise is a young-looking general for India. He hates being here, and is in all the first struggles of ‘a real ancient Briton.’ (Don’t you remember how you and I were ‘ancient Britons’ always, when we fell into foreign society?) He is wretched because nobody understands his London topics, or knows his London people, and he revels in a long letter from Lord W. He thought G. very much altered since he had seen him, and G. thought the same of him. I suppose it will be very dreadful when we all meet. ‘Oh! my coevals, remnants of yourselves,’ I often think of that. What sort of a remnant are you? I am a remnant of faded yellow gingham.

General E. said, ‘It seems odd that I have never seen A. since we were shooting grouse together, and now I had to ask for an audience and for employment. I got a hint, and rather a strong one, from the Governor-General to take Delhi in my way to Meerut, and to look at the troops there and be active in my command.’ He went off with a heavy heart to his palanquin, which must be a shaky conveyance for gout. One sees how new arrivals must amuse old Indians. He cannot, of course, speak a word of Hindoostanee, neither can his aide-de-camp. ‘My groom is the best of us, but somehow we never can make the bearers understand us. I have a negro who speaks English, but I could not bring him dÂk.’ I suppose he means a native; but that is being what the ‘artful dodger’ in ‘Oliver Twist’ would have called ‘jolly green.’ He can hardly have picked up a woolly black negro who speaks Hindoostanee. I wish I knew.

Kutoghun, Sunday, Feb. 9.

We have halted here for Sunday under a few trees, which they call Kutoghun. I don’t see any houses within ten miles.

Syme, Feb. 10.

We were met this morning by two Shuter sirwars, bringing invitations from the serious party at Allahabad to a fancy fair and a supper, and from the wicked set, to a ball and a supper, and begging us to name our own days. We have but Thursday and Friday, and it is rather hard, after a long march and before an early boat, to put in these gaieties. However, we cannot help it, but have declined both the suppers.

Allahabad, Friday, Feb. 14.

There! we arrived yesterday; the last time in my natural life in which I will make a long dusty journey before breakfast—at least, that is my hope, my intention, and my plot; of course I may be defeated in after years.

The camp is breaking up fast; camp followers asking for rupees in every direction; a fleet of boats loaded, and more wanted; all useless horses and furniture are being sold off by Webb at the stables; and to-morrow, of all this crowd which still covers five acres, there will be nothing left but Captain C. alone in his tent.

The fancy fair looked pretty in the evening—very ‘Vicar of Wrexhillish,’ such a mixture of tracts and champagne, &c., but the cheapest shop I have been in in India. We brought home nearly a carriage-full of goods, which will do to give to the servants. To-night there is the ball. We have written to beg it may be early, and we go on board the budgerows to sleep, and they take us down to the steamer to-morrow. X. and fourteen boats’-load of trunks went this morning, and there are about thirty-five more to make their way to Calcutta without steam—carriages, horses, &c.—which will arrive about a fortnight after us.

I heard from G. about 250 miles from Calcutta: quite well, and delighted with his rapid travelling—four miles an hour!