W. and I got up by a wrong gun this morning, one of Scindia's. There is no carriage road, so we all travel separately in tonjauns, or on elephants, or horses or anyhow; and _after_ I had set off in a great fuss at being so late, G.'s first gun fired. I found W. scrambling along on a pony, under the same delusion; and we got in here an hour before the others, riding the last six miles as hard as we could. I was glad to be in soon, the weather is so very hot. It has been cold for about three weeks this year.--God bless you! I have been trying to read over my journal and have stuck in it. What very heavy reading it is! Jan. 20. I have kept this open for two days, in hopes that the letters would come in, but we have just got all the Galignanis with an announcement from Bombay, that the Falmouth packet is not come at all; and all your letters are there--and everybody's. It is so disheartening!--We cannot have them for five weeks. CHAPTER LII. Nuddea Gaon, Thursday, Jan. 23, 1840. That missing Falmouth packet still hangs on my mind, and I cannot digest its loss after three days, which must be very unwholesome. We are poking along the narrow roads and ravines of Bundelcund, always afraid every night that the carriage will not be available, and finding every morning that the rajah of the day (we live in a course of rajahs) has widened the old road, or cut a new one, and picked the stones off the hills and thrown them into the holes; and so, somehow, we come along. We have our old friend, Mr. F., who marched with us two years ago, in camp with his Jhansi rajah, who has met us and been durbared and visited; and a Captain R. with _his_ rajah in prospect; and Colonel E. still here, because we every now and then step over a mile of Gwalior territory; and Colonel H. also, an old friend, and a sad spectacle of what two _more_ years in India have done. This morning we came in on elephants because the _Duttyah_ rajah met G. We arrived all over dust, but still, as I was telling G., the meeting between Dutty and Dusty was tolerably good. Duttyah's is rather a pretty story. He was picked up 'a naked, new-born child' under a tree at this place by the Governor-General's agent, who was taking his morning's ride, and who carried the child to the Palace. The old rajah, who had no children, said it was the gift of God, and that he would adopt him; and an adopted son is, with the natives, as good an heir as any other; but sometimes the English Government objects, as territories without an heir fall to the Company. There were ill-natured people who said that the Resident Agent took a paternal interest in the little brown baby, and knew exactly under which tree he was to look for a forsaken child; but I am sure the boy's look quite disproves that calumny. He is more hideously fat than any boy of fourteen I ever saw; a regular well-fed Hindu. The Government never gave a formal consent to the adoption, but his territory is particularly