the military and civil population to camp on the banks of a river miles away in the forest below, when we were saved by timely rain. Yet despite the simple life we were leading in Buxa my monthly expenses were more than twenty pounds for the bare necessities of existence. I had to pay rent to Government for my bungalow, and a share of the rent for the Mess, as well as my share of the expenses of mess-servants, lighting, and food. My personal household consisted of my "boy" or body-servant, a _dhobi_ or washerman, a _bhisti_ or water-carrier, a _syce_ or groom, and my sword-orderly, a sepoy of the regiment. This last individual, a Mussulman named Mohammed Draj Khan, had been in my service for many years and, with the fidelity of the Indian, was faithfully attached to me. He went with me to China in 1900 with the Indian Expeditionary Force and returned with me again there five years later. When I was going from Hong Kong on furlough to the United States, Canada and Europe, I arranged for him to be given six months' leave to his home in India. But when he heard of it Draj Khan was exceedingly wroth. "What? Am I not to accompany my Sahib?" he demanded indignantly. "No; I cannot take you with me to Europe," I replied. "But I have got you leave to go home to your wife whom you have not seen for four years." "Oh, my wife does not matter," was the ungallant answer; "she can wait. But my place is with my Sahib wherever he goes." And he has never forgiven me for not taking him; although he still continues to serve me faithfully. Our sepoys fared better than their British officers. We found on arrival that the local _bunniahs_ or shop-keepers were in the habit of supplying the men with very inferior and bad flour and other food-stuffs and charging a high price for them, relying on the monopoly they enjoyed. I determined to follow the example of the United States Government and make war on trusts. So I sent my native officers to Cooch Behar and other towns fifty miles away to purchase supplies, and ordered flour in bulk from a mill under English management in Calcutta. I had it sent by rail to Buxa Road Station, and conveyed thence by our elephants and Bhuttia coolies. An elephant can carry a weight of ten or twelve maunds--a maund being equal to eighty pounds. The sturdy Bhuttias, women as well as men, could come up our steep road, each with a load of two maunds on his or her back. Their burdens were fixed in two forked sticks bound to the shoulders in such a way that when the bearers sat down the ends of the sticks rested on the ground and supported the weight. But when heavily laden a coolie cannot then rise to his feet unaided, unless he first lies down, rolls over on his face, then pushes himself on to his knees with his hands and stands up. In Chemulpo and Seoul in Corea I have seen coolies employ a similar method of carrying their loads.