[3] The Major certainly offered to leave an old snuff-box at Mr. Cunningham’s office; but it contained no extract from a newspaper, and does not _quite_ prove that he killed a rhinoceros and stormed fourteen entrenchments at the siege of Allyghur. [4] The double-jointed camel of Bactria, which the classic reader may recollect is mentioned by Suidas (in his Commentary on the Flight of Darius), is so called by the Mahrattas. [5] There is some trifling inconsistency on the Major’s part. Shah Allum was notoriously blind: how, then, could he have seen Gahagan? The thing is manifestly impossible. [6] I do not wish to brag of my style of writing, or to pretend that my genius as a writer has not been equalled in former times; but if, in the works of Byron, Scott, Goethe, or Victor Hugo, the reader can find a more beautiful sentence than the above, I will be obliged to him, that is all—I simply say, _I will be obliged to him_.—G. O’G. G., M.H.E.I.C.S., C.I.H.A. [7] The Major has put the most approved language into the mouths of his Indian characters. Bismillah, Barikallah, and so on, according to the novelists, form the very essence of Eastern conversation.