We have had the Sikh deputation here for nearly a week. The durbar was put off from Saturday, as we had on Saturday and Sunday two regular hill rainy days, an even down-pour, that was a great trial to the flat mud roofs, and a thick mist quite up to the windows. It is the sort of thing that lasts for two months during the rains, but it has no business to come misting into our houses now. However, the clearing up on Sunday was worth seeing. The hills were so beautiful and purple, and such masses of white clouds sailing along the valleys. The Sikh deputation came on Monday. There are six principal people, one of them a young cousin of Runjeet Singh's, and another a fakeer who is Runjeet's chief confidant and adviser, and a clever man. He is dressed outwardly as a fakeer ought to be, in coarse brown cloth; but if that opens a little, there is underneath a gold dress embroidered in seed pearl. Captain M. and I arranged the rooms according to our own fancy, and we made out a much better-looking durbar than when ---- takes our house in hand, and desecrates it with ugly white cloth, to ensure the natives taking off their shoes. We covered the rooms with scarlet linen, which looked very handsome, and equally ensured that etiquette, and saved the appearance of a drying-ground. It is not like a common durbar for tributaries, who are dismissed in five minutes, but this lasted an hour. G., in a gilt chair, in the centre, the six Sikh chiefs and Mr. B. at the right hand, and all the envoys, forty of them, in full dress and solemn silence, in a circle all round the room, and in the folding-doors between the two rooms a beautiful group of twelve Sikhs, who had no claim to chairs, but sat on the floor. And before this circle G. has to talk and to listen to the most flowery nonsense imaginable, to hear it translated and retranslated, and to vary it to each individual. It took a quarter of an hour to satisfy him about the maharajah's health, and to ascertain that the roses had bloomed in the garden of friendship, and the nightingales had sung in the bowers of affection sweeter than ever, since the two powers had approached each other. Then he hoped that the deputation had not suffered from the rain; and they said that the canopy of friendship had interposed such a thick cloud that their tents had remained quite dry, which was touching, only it did so happen that the tents were so entirely soaked through that Runjeet Singh had been obliged to hire the only empty house in Simla for them. Their dresses were beautiful, particularly the _squatting_ group in the centre, and it is a great pity there was no painter here. Wednesday, May 9.