To Darjeeling--Railway journeys in India--Protection for solitary ladies--Reappearing rivers--Siliguri--At the foot of the Himalayas--A mountain railway--Through the jungle--Looping the loop--View of the Plains--Darjeeling--Civilisation seven thousand feet high--Varied types--View from the Chaurasta--White workers in India--Life in Hill Stations--Lieutenant-Governors--A "dull time" in Darjeeling--The bazaar--Types of hill races--Turquoises--Tiger-skins for tourists--The Amusement Club--The Everlasting Snows--Kinchinjunga--The bachelors' ball--A Government House ball--The marriage-market value of Indian civilians--Less demand for military men--Theatricals--Lebong Races--Picturesque race-goers--Ladies in India--Husband hunters--The empty life of an Englishwoman--The dangers of Hill Stations--A wife four months in the year--The hills _taboo_ for the subaltern--Back to Buxa. Sixty or eighty miles west of Buxa Duar and seven thousand feet above the sea is the pleasant Himalayan Hill Station of Darjeeling. Less than a day's journey by rail from Calcutta, it attracts to it the fortunate mortals who, in the summer months, can escape from the heat of that crowded city and the Bengal plains and plunge into a whirl of gaieties on the cool heights of the Pleasure Colony. To it I had my first change from Buxa. About a year after my arrival I got fourteen days' leave to Darjeeling in order to meet the officer of my regiment commanding our detachment at Gantok in Sikkim, who was coming there to appear at one of the many examinations that plague the soldier's soul. The month was October, perhaps the unpleasantest time of the year in India, when the Rains are almost ended and the heat is intensified by the dampness of earth and atmosphere.