On the following evening, Captain Marpeet, according to engagement, called in a hired buggy, to take me a drive on the Course. The Course, as is well known, is the grand resort of the _beau monde_ of Calcutta, which, like a colony of owls or bats from a ruin, emerge at sundown from all parts of that extensive city, to see and to be seen, and to enjoy the coolness of the evening breeze. Seated in his gig, Marpeet drew up before the barrack in all his glory, handling the ribbons with the peculiar and finished grace of a man who had made it his study. Great, indeed, were his pretensions in that way, and I am confident he would rather have been the leader of the four-in-hand club, than have written the _Principia_ of Newton. In I jumped; Marpeet cracked his whip to mettle up his ticca[6] tit—an animal deficient in flesh and blood, certainly, but exhibiting an amazing deal of bone. Away we went. The evening gun had just boomed; the myriad crows of the Fort cawed querulously responsive from the trees; the bugles sounded; the drums beat; the guards at the gates, European and native, were turned out; captains and lieutenants, flushed with tiffin or a nap, swords under their arms, sauntered along to join them. The firefly here and there twinkled in the trees, and the far-off yell of the jackall proclaimed the approach of night, when away we whirled through covered ways and over thundering drawbridges, past scarp, counter-scarp, and glacis, and in a few minutes found ourselves amidst the throng of carriages and equestrians on the Course, the mass of the Government-house, with its capacious dome and lion-crowned gates, rising in front, and the vast semicircle of Chowringhee, with its aggregation of snow-white structures, stretching away far to the right. What a singular scene here presented itself to my admiring sight! What an admixture of nations, and their several modes and peculiarities—of English turn outs and Indian piebald imitations—with strange equipages, combining European finish with the native original! Carriages and equestrians, walking, trotting, or galloping, passing and repassing!