CHAPTER VI. TRIP TO BENARES.—CAWNPORE.—AGRA.—HOMEWARD VOYAGE IN THE S. S. “VIXEN.”—DISTRESS.—PERILOUS TRAMP.—ADEN AT LAST.—SUEZ CANAL.—ENGLAND.—AFRICA ONCE MORE. Having finished all the “red tape” (which the nature of my peculiar charge demanded) with Dr. Grant, the coolie emigration agent in Calcutta, I made arrangements with the captain of the _Vixen_, then lying in the Hooghly, to take medical charge of his steamer on her return voyage through the Suez Canal to England. As she did not sail until the 6th of the month (May), I found I had time enough left to visit, as I had proposed to myself, the principal scenes of the Indian mutiny. After spending several days in Calcutta, I left Hourah, where the station of the East Indian Railway is, at the other side of the river, and took a return ticket allowing me to stop anywhere en route to Agra and back. If I were to describe the whole of my trip, of which I wrote a full account at the time, I am afraid I should weary my readers, the circumstances and places connected with the memorable outbreak of the Indian mutiny being too well known to bear repetition. I may, however, briefly state that I visited the French settlement of Chandernagore, twenty-two miles from Calcutta, like a French oasis in an English desert, or a French desert in an English oasis, as my readers may prefer, being only two miles long by one broad, and passing by numberless stations, rested at Dinapore, and then went straight on to Benares, the Holy City. Here the bridge of boats across the Ganges, the thousands of temples and mosques, especially the Doorga Khoud, or monkey temple, and its chattering, grinning crew of sacred inhabitants, the numberless splendid _ghats_ along the river side, with thousands of men and women bathing and praying, the Lingam, or well of life, at which all pilgrims drink, the burning “ghat” where bodies after being reduced to ashes are committed to the Holy River, and the Mosque of Aurunzebe, kept me well employed for a day or two. I then visited Mirzapore, Allahabad, a great railway centre, and came on to Cawnpore, saw, of course, the Memorial Garden, the well down which “a great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children,” the dying and the dead, were thrown by the order of Nana Sahib, and then branched off to Lucknow. Never shall I forget the scene presented by the Kaiser Bagh, the great work of the ex-king’s reign, and its gardens, the Secunderbagh, where the 93d Highlanders and 53d foot, in fearful revenge, bayoneted to a man 2,000 rebel Sepoys, the fantastic _Martiniere_, a school founded by an eccentric Frenchman formerly in the service of the Hon. East India Co., about eighty-five years ago, the Residency, where for five long months a little band of noble hearts held out, and the room where the shell burst that was the death of Sir Henry Lawrence. I walked along the portico so