He landed with his wife at Bombay towards the end of 1842, and thus gained his first experience of Western India. Thence he travelled by palanquin, at the rate of thirty miles a day, over the eight hundred miles that separated him from Allahabad in the North-Western Provinces to which he officially belonged. In the beginning of 1843 he marched at the rate of ten miles a day in tents towards the Delhi territory, where he was thankful to find employment. The tent-life in the bracing winter-season of Upper India was very beneficial to him physically, and he resumed work amidst his early associations in good health. With his wife and young children he settled down to the routine of public life, and girded himself for the discharge of ordinary duties. At Kurnal, not far from Delhi, he made a searching and practical analysis of the causes which produced a malarious and disabling sickness among the troops stationed there. In 1844 he was appointed to the substantive post of Magistrate and Collector of Delhi. While holding this appointment he laid the foundation of his fortunes in public life. In November, 1845, he first met the Governor-General, Lord Hardinge, who passed through Delhi to join the army assembling near the Sutlej for the first Sikh war. His bearing, conversation and subsequent proceedings, made a lasting impression on the mind of the Governor-General, who ever afterwards spoke and wrote of him as the ideal of what a civil officer for India ought to be. He soon justified by deeds the high estimate thus formed respecting him, for he was charged with the duty of finding transport for the siege train with its heavy guns, stores and munitions from Delhi to the battlefields on the bank of the Sutlej; and this transport was to consist of four thousand carts with bullocks and drivers complete. He furnished a signal instance of the manner whereby in India the civil administration aids the army by providing transport in time of war. Such transport, in quantities adequate for the service, cannot be obtained without a really powerful organisation; during public emergency it can by law be forcibly impressed, but when thus collected it is likely to prove inefficient unless the civil authority makes such arrangements as may secure the contentment of those from whom the vehicles and the animals are hired: in this case his arrangements were practically perfect. Within a very short time he so managed that all the thousands of carts should be driven by their owners, who, for good hire, partly paid in advance, became willing to undertake the service. He despatched the long-extended train in complete order so that it arrived, without any straggling or deserting, without the failure of a man, a wheel or a bullock, in time for the battle of Sobraon. For the first time in his life a public service had been demanded from him of definite importance, requiring knowledge of the natives, aptitude for command and power of organisation.