Camp, Ferozepore, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 1838.

I PUT up a large packet to you on Saturday, which will accompany this; but I was shy of making it thicker. Sunday, the whole camp was glad of a halt; the sandy roads tire all the people much.

There was a very large congregation at church, I was told; we have so many troops with us now, and Y.’s preaching is in great reputation. On Monday we marched eleven more miles with the same dusty result. The chief incident was, that G. was to have tried an Arabian of W. O.’s, which is a perfect lamb in a crowd, and was intended to officiate at the great review ‘as is to be;’ but the syce by mistake gave him another horse of W.’s, which pulls worse than G.’s own horse. F., who was riding with him, assured him that the Arabian had such a tender mouth that it was only chafing because he held it too tight: he loosened the bridle—away went the horse like a shot, and away went twenty-five of the body-guard after him, thinking it was his lordship’s pleasure to go at that helter-skelter pace: away went M., who is on duty; in short, nothing could be finer than the idea; but they all pulled up when they saw how it was. G.’s horse galloped on two miles for its own amusement, and then he made it go another for his, and finally changed it for his own horse, whose merits rose by comparison. I was in the carriage behind, and W. came up in the greatest fuss—having heard of the mistake—and just as he was saying the horse would run away, two of the guard came back to say it had done so; so he had the pleasure of a good prophecy.

Yesterday we came twelve miles. My health is neither better nor worse, so I came on in the carriage; all the others rode the last four miles, and were met by M. and all his staff at the town of Ferozepore. G. let me go on half a mile in advance, in order to avoid the dust, which must have shocked General R., who never lets even a little dog precede him in his march.

I passed him and his suite by the side of the road, drawn up according to the strictest rule—a very large body of cocked hats. General R. in front, alone, then a long row of general officers, then a longer row of a lower grade. It was too awful and military a moment for speech. I was not sure whether it was not irregular to kiss my hand; however, I ventured on that little movement, which was received with a benign ‘clignotement de l’oeil’ signifying ‘Wrong, but I forgive it for once.’

I got in three-quarters of an hour before the rest, who came a foot’s pace, and General E. told F. they always marched that fashion—General R. first, they behind—a trot never allowed.

General R. was uncommonly affable, and came and paid me a visit in my tent, where I was lying down, all dust and fatigue, and wishing for breakfast. Sir W. C., too, came in for a moment, in the highest glee, not so fat as he was at Calcutta—we expected he would have been twice the size. I told him he was grown thin, and he went back to his favourite story of the courtiers telling George IV., when he was at his fattest, ‘Your Majesty is regaining your figure!’

We had a most interesting envoy from General A., who is employed by Runjeet in Peshawur, and who wrote to each of us his polite French regrets that he could not come here, but he sent ‘un trÈs petit paquet’ of the shawls we had commissioned him to get worked in Cashmere, when we saw him in Calcutta, and also the Cashmere gowns he had promised. He declared that there never were such failures; that he had sent seven or eight ‘surveillants’ to Cashmere, ‘mais on m’a tout gÂtÉ.’

An hour after, there arrived, instead of the ‘petit paquet,’ a very large pillow, or rather a small ottoman, brought in by two men, and then we had such cutting and nicking and tearing away of oilcloth and muslin and shawl paper, and at last arrived at the treasures. Four shawl dresses, four magnificent square shawls, and four long scarfs to match the dresses—but the fineness and the brightness of the whole concern it is impossible to describe. One gets to value shawls only by their fineness at last, and we have seen nothing like these. They have been a year and a half in making. We have ascertained the prices of these shawls, which are very cheap considering their beauty. The dresses were at Calcutta promised us as presents; but under the circumstances of our being in Runjeet’s country, and A. one of his generals, we want to pay for them, which Captain E. has undertaken to do. I now say once more, as I have often said before, I really don’t want any more shawls, but yet I do always when they come in my way.

In the afternoon Sir W. C., B., W., M., and two or three more, went on elephants to compliment the Maharajah, and met half-way Kurruck Singh, his son and supposed heir, Ajeet Singh, our Simla friend, and Sujeyt Singh, the great dandy of the PunjÂb, with several others coming to compliment G. The Maharajah had the best of the bargain.

Kurruck Singh is apparently an idiot; some people say he only affects it, to keep Runjeet from being jealous of him, but it looks like very unaffected and complete folly.

Runjeet kept our deputation very late. He was in the highest spirits, W. said, and laughed out loud at several jokes. Sir W. C. took the fancy of all the Sikhs. He is very jovial, besides being courteous in his manners, and talks at a great rate. Runjeet produced some of his wine, a sort of liquid fire, that none of our strongest spirits approach, and in general Europeans cannot swallow more than a drop of it.

Sir W. tossed off his glass and then asked for another, which they thought very fine. He came back of course very tipsy, but they said he was very amusing at dinner. There are always nautches at these durbars, and one of W.’s former acquaintances, called ‘the Lotus,’ who is very beautiful, looked so pretty that W. asked E. if he might give her the little bunch of pearl flowers that was given to all the gentlemen. E. said it would amuse the Maharajah, and so it did, but B. is seriously uneasy at the dreadful loss to Government of the pearl bouquet. It was worth about ten shillings, I suppose.

Friday.

Yesterday was the day of the great meeting. All the ladies (only ten with the whole army) came to breakfast at half-past seven, and so did ‘the great Panjandrum himself.’

I have not been to any meal, and hardly have seen anybody, for the last three weeks, so I did not join them till it was nearly time for Runjeet to arrive: when he was at the end of the street, G. and all the gentlemen went on their elephants to meet him.

There were such a number of elephants, that the clash at meeting was very great, and very destructive to the howdahs and hangings. G. handed the Maharajah into the first large tent, where we were all waiting; but the Sikhs are very unmanageable, and they rushed in on all sides, and the European officers were rather worse, so that the tent was full in a moment, and as the light only comes in from the bottom, the crowd made it perfectly dark, and the old man seemed confused and bothered. However, he sat down for a few minutes on the sofa between G. and me, and recovered. He is exactly like an old mouse, with grey whiskers and one eye. When they got into the inner tent, which was to have been quite private, the English officers were just like so many bears; put aside all the sentries, absolutely refused to listen to the aides-de-camp, and filled the room; so then, finding it must be public, G. sent us word we might all come there, and we had a good view of it all.

Runjeet had no jewels on whatever, nothing but the commonest red silk dress. He had two stockings on at first, which was considered an unusual circumstance; but he very soon contrived to slip one off, that he might sit with one foot in his hand, comfortably. B. was much occupied in contriving to edge one-foot of his chair on to the carpet, in which he at last succeeded.

Next to him sat Heera Singh, a very handsome boy, who is Runjeet’s favourite, and was loaded with emeralds and pearls. Dhian Singh his father is the prime minister, and uncommonly good-looking: he was dressed in yellow satin, with a quantity of chain armour and steel cuirass. All their costumes were very picturesque. There were a little boy and girl about four and five years old, children of some of Runjeet’s sirdars who were killed in battle, and he always has these children with him, and has married them to each other. They were crawling about the floor, and running in and out between Runjeet and G., and at one time the little boy had got his arm twisted round G.’s leg. I sent to ask B. for two of the common pearl necklaces that are given as khelwuts, and sent them with a private note round to G., who gave them to the children, which delighted the old mouse.

After half an hour’s talk, Sir W. C., with some of our gentlemen, marched up the room with my picture of the Queen on a green and gold cushion; all the English got up, and a salute of twenty-one guns was fired. Runjeet took it up in his hands, though it was a great weight, and examined it for at least five minutes with his one piercing eye, and asked B. for an explanation of the orb and sceptre, and whether the dress were correct, and if it were really like; and then said it was the most gratifying present he could have received, and that on his return to his camp, the picture would be hung in front of his tent, and a royal salute fired. When all the other presents had been given that could come in trays, 200 shells (not fish, but gunpowder shells) were presented to the Maharajah, and two magnificent howitzers, that had been cast on purpose for him (as I think I told you), which seemed to please him; and outside, there was an elephant with gold trappings, and seven horses equally bedizened. His strongest passion is still for horses: one of these hit his fancy, and he quite forgot all his state, and ran out in the sun to feel its legs and examine it. Webb (the coachman) went down in the afternoon to take the Mizzur horses to Runjeet, and gave us such an amusing account of his interview.

He talks a sort of half-Yorkshire, half-Indian dialect.

‘Why, you see, my lord, I had a long job of it. The old man was a-saying of his prayers, and all the time he was praying, he was a-looking after my horses. At last he gets up, and I was tired of waiting in all that sun. But law! Miss Eden, then comes that picture that you’ve been a-painting of; and then the old man sends for his sirdar, and that sirdar and they all go down on their knees, a matter of sixty of them, and first one has a look and then the other, and Runjeet he asked me such a many questions, I wished the picture further. He talked about it for an hour and a half, and I telled him I never seed the Queen. How should I? I have been here with two Governor-Generals, and twelve years in India above that. So then he says, says he, “which Governor-General do you like best?" And I says, “Why, Maharajah, I haint much fault to find with neither of them.” So then we had out the horses, and there the old man was a-running about looking at ’em, more like a coolie than a king. I never see a man so pleased, and he made me ride ’em. So, when I had been there four hours a’most, all in the sun, he give me this pair of gold bracelets and this pair of shawls; and he says, says he, “Go and show yourself to the Lord Sahib, just as you are: mind you don’t take them off.” But law! I did not like to come such a figure, so here they are!’

B. was standing by, so I had the presence of mind to say, ‘Of course Lord A. should let Webb keep those;’ and he said directly, that for any actual service done, it was only payment, and they would hardly pay Webb for all the trouble he had with the young horses. So Webb went off very happy, and I suppose when we return to Calcutta Mrs. Webb will be equally so.