A rainy miserable sort of day, but not bad enough to prevent the tents from moving. We had several of the camp to dinner. St. Cloup is longing for our arrival at Kurnaul, that he may vary his cookery a little. We cannot kill a cow in the face of all these Sikhs, and at Simla the natives do not like it; so it is a long time since we have had the luxury of a beef-steak or a veal cutlet. CHAPTER XXXII. Soonair, Friday, Jan. 18, 1839. We halt here till Monday. There is a great gathering of petty chiefs, and our arrival was very pretty. Each man came on his elephant, with a few wild followers on horseback, some with a second elephant, and they all scramble up to G., every individual giving him a bow and arrows, or a matchlock. His hand was soon full, then his howdah was hung with them; the hirkaru behind was buried in bows; then they boiled over into our howdahs, and at every break in the road a fresh chief and more bows appeared. At last we came to Mr. E., bringing the Nahun rajah. Don't you in your ignorance go and confound him with the old _Nabun_ rajah. This is the Nahun chief whom we visited last year in the hills, and who is very gentlemanlike and civilised. I have found out why I was so glad to see him again. He has light blue eyes, and after three years of those enormous black beads the natives habitually see with, these were mild and refreshing. They all brought us to the camp in a drizzling rain, which came on to a pour in the course of the day, and a wretched business it always is. All the servants and camp followers look so miserable and catch such bad colds. I thought when we were at Nabun that an old man, a sort of prime minister of the rajah's, would make a good drawing, and I told him so; and to-day he arrived, having made two marches to have the picture drawn. He gave me his matchlock, which I asked Captain D. to return with the usual speech, that it was much better in his hands than in mine; but the old man said no; it was a particularly good matchlock; he had shot with it very often, and I should not easily find so good a one, so C. gave me a watch to present to him in exchange, which quite delighted him. While Captain L. E. was gone to fetch the watch, the old man took the opportunity to question my jemadar about our habits, and I understood enough of the language to make out that he was asking how many times we eat in the day. The natives generally only eat once, but I believe they think our way of eating at several different times rather grand; at all events, the jemadar did not omit a spoonful, and it was rather shocking to hear how many times in the day we were fed, beginning with the cup of coffee before marching; and the afternoon cup of tea sounded wrong and _waste-not-want-not-ish_. However, the old sirdar said it was all 'wah wah'--excellent, to be able to eat so much. Saturday, Jan. 19.