In one month after the confirmed sentence of the court-martial had been made known to me, I was compelled to obey the orders which I had received to repair to Calcutta, previous to embarkation for England. To enable me to comply with these directions, I was obliged to sacrifice all my property for a mere nothing, and I set out for the Presidency with my little boy, now my only comfort, having made the little infant over to my brother-in-law, J.P. Mellaird, Esq., indigo-planter Tirhoot, where his grandmother, somewhat recovered, found refuge also. The voyage down the lonely river Ganges was not calculated to soothe my sorrows or to cheer my prospects. I reached Calcutta in safety, and remained there a considerable time waiting for a ship, where, strange to say, I received an order to proceed home with invalids, and to place myself immediately under the command of Captain Mathers, of his Majesty's 59th regiment. This order I was bound to obey; but it prevented me from bringing home my little boy, as every part of the ship was taken up for the troops, and the captain of the vessel would not accommodate me under a thousand rupees--a sum which I had not to give. A smaller foreign ship would have brought both myself and child home for what the Company allow for officers sent home--fifteen hundred rupees. By this I was deprived of the satisfaction of bringing home my child, who remains in India with my brother-in-law to this day. In the beginning of the month of April, 1825, I embarked on board the free-trader, _Euphrates_, Captain Mead commanding, with an insufficient crew, as they did not exceed twenty-three hands in all, and winter was before us for the whole voyage. This would not have been a very pleasant prospect to the shattered nerves of an old Indian; but mine, although I had been so many years in that hot country, did not come under that description, and I had learnt long since to endure hardships. I was never much addicted to look on the dark side of things, but now it was impossible to refrain from thinking of the situation in which I stood. I was proceeding to a country, and that country my native home; but it was not endeared to me by a solitary relative that I knew of. I could not help comparing the close of my military career with its commencement. I was then friendless and isolated; and who had I now but those who mourned my departure from a land which I was compelled to quit for ever? I left England, when a child, without one friend or relative to bid me adieu, and I was now returning to it without one to bid me welcome! Yet there is something pleasing to every British bosom, in the anticipation of returning to the land of one's birth; and, although my prospects were anything but bright, I felt, notwithstanding, that I could be content to live in my native country, even in poverty. But the necessity which compelled me to leave behind me my two sweet babes distressed me