[8] In the original "bulkh," which we have ventured to amend as above. The Oriental words and phrases are, in several instances, very incorrectly printed; but whether the fault rests with the colonel's "undecipherable" MS., or the correctors of the press, it is not for us to decide. Among the distinguished visitors to Hurdwar at this season of festivity was the noted Begum Sombre, or Sumroo, whose face the colonel compares to that of an old Scotch highlander, and her person to a sackful of shawls, and who declared "that the Duke of Wellington _must_ be at heart a Catholic, _because_ he emancipated the Catholics!" He also renewed his gastronomic friendship with his friend Bumbo Khan, with whom the recollections of past indigestion did not prevent him from feasting on _mahaseer_, a delicious fish found in this part of the Ganges; and on this occasion his Apician ecstasies are not alloyed by subsequent regrets--"even now the recollection soothes me"--and he recommends such of his readers as are yet ignorant of this luxury to start forthwith for Hurdwar and repair the omission. The fair ended April 13; and the colonel having previously succeeded in disposing of his buggy to a potentate whom he calls "the Kheerea Thunnasir Rajah," (we believe, the ruler of one of the Seik protected states,) and buying a stout Turcomani pony for the hills, started the same day on the road to Suharunpoor. He favours his readers, _en passant_, with some exceedingly original speculations touching the Mosaic deluge, in reference to the hills about Hurdwar, which do not speak very highly for his attainments in geology, though in some other branches of natural history, and particularly in botany, he appears to be no mean proficient. The journey was disturbed by attempts to steal the colonel's new purchase, (which was not, like the rest of the stud, distinguished from the horses of the country by having its tail cut,) and by a quarrel at Secunderpore with a thannadar, or native police magistrate, whose European superior's neglect of the colonel's complaint he charitably attributes to "some (I hope slight) derangement of the stomach." At Suharunpore he visited the well-known botanist Dr Royle, the curator of the Company's botanic garden there, then engaged in those labours on the Flora of the Himmalayas which have been since given to the world; and at Boorea, leaving the British territory, he entered that of the protected Seik states, whose petty chieftains are secured in their semi-independence by the treaty with Runjeet in 1809, which confined the ruler of Lahore to the right bank of the Sutlej. But their reception of the colonel did not appear to indicate any great degree of gratitude for these favours to the British nation, as represented in his person; for not one of the five Seik chiefs, "each of whom has his own snug little fort close to the city," would supply him with a lodging; and it was only by perseverance and