I feel quite well again: we start for the hills this afternoon. The party consists of seven Europeans and about one hundred natives. It happened rather curiously that the Rajah to whom the hill belongs called here this morning on business: he is a very intelligent young man. He has volunteered to accompany us, to supply us with elephants if we wish to hunt upon the plain, and to provide us an escort of five hundred men; so we shall go in state. He rode a magnificent white horse with _pink eyes_. We each take a small axe, a pair of pistols, and two guns. But before proceeding I would enter into more particulars concerning the excursion that we took for the benefit of my wife's health. On Monday we all started at half-past five in the morning--Captain R. and myself on horseback, and Mrs. R. and my wife in palanquins, having their ponies led by their side. We had about one hundred and twenty servants with us, Captain R. having a good deal of surveying and other work to do. As we went along the road he stopped to inspect the different bridges, &c. We had one little adventure this morning. It seems that some months ago a beyraghee, or mendicant, sat himself down by the side of the road, a few miles from Cuttack, with nothing but an umbrella to shade him from the sun. There he remained for some weeks, subsisting on the charity of the pilgrims who were proceeding to Juggernat'h. I should have mentioned that our road lay, for a considerable distance, on the direct route for Pooree. After some time the beyraghee made himself a little hut of wicker-work, after the fashion of many of the Indian devotees. These baskets, as I may call them, are just large enough to contain a man in a lying-down position; they are, in fact, mere coverings. By degrees the basket became a good-sized mud hut; then the beyraghee began to enclose a small piece of ground, which he cultivated, and built himself a granary of bamboo to contain the rice given him by the pilgrims. Now, although a man with an umbrella does not much matter, yet a hut with a little field, around which a village is likely enough to spring up, cannot be allowed upon the roadside, which belongs to Government.