When visiting Serampore, and hearing from Mr. Mack of the doings and achievements of the great men whose residence at Serampore has given it a sacredness it will ever retain in the annals of Indian Missions, I felt as a young Greek would feel on being taken to Marathon and Thermopylae. I felt I was entering on a war, where there had been heroes before me, which demanded courage and endurance of a far higher order than had ever been enlisted in the cause of patriotism. CHAPTER II. VOYAGE TO BENARES. _March, 1839._ I left myself in the hands of friends in Calcutta as to the best mode of proceeding to my destination. There were at that time three modes of travelling to the North-Western Provinces. One was being carried in a palanquin on men's shoulders, arrangements being made to have fresh bearers every few miles. For a long journey of more than four hundred miles to Benares this was at once a very tedious and fatiguing mode of travelling. To one who knew not a word of the language of the people in whose hands one was to be for days it was additionally trying. Yet not a few persons newly arrived, some of them delicate ladies, did travel in that mode to far more distant places than Benares, and very seldom any mishap befell them. In this mode little more could be taken in the way of luggage than necessary clothing. Another mode was by the river in a native boat, with a crew engaged to take the party to their destination. Not a few travelled in this way, even to Delhi. Weeks, often months, were spent on the voyage; great inconveniences were endured, and not infrequently great perils encountered from the sudden storms to which voyagers on the Ganges are exposed, from the strong and eddying currents in some parts of the river, and perhaps most of all from the treacherous character of the boatmen. In 1841 and 1842 a severe storm fell on a large fleet of boats taking a European regiment to the north-west. Many of the boats were wrecked, and, if I remember rightly, about three hundred men lost their lives.