Passing through Aladdin’s Gate, a very fine arch, we saw before us the splendid column of the ‘Minar.’ It rises in a succession of marvellous sculptured fluted columns, two hundred and forty feet high, very wide at the base, and diminishing in circumference at each series of joints till the summit is reached. Like the campaniles attached to churches abroad, whence the bells ring out their summons to prayer, so from the height of the Kootub the faithful were called to their devotions in the adjacent mosque. Sultan Baber, in his journal, mentions the Kootub as ‘that strange, tall, unrivalled pillar, which was raised to call the faithful to prayer in the splendid mosque open to the blue heavens below.’ We were informed that the Kootub had been erected by a prince, to enable his daughter to ascend every day and look upon the holy river Jumna, a feat which, if performed by her, must have kept her in first-rate condition, for the Kootub is, I think, higher than the Monument of London, and the winding stair is very steep. At length we were enabled to leave Delhi. There is no more agreeable duty than a long march in India during the cold weather. After all the necessary preparations have been made; after the means of transport have been collected, and various other arrangements, trying to the temper and patience of commanding-officer, adjutant, and quarter-master, have been got over, the regimental order-book contains the following announcement, that ‘The regiment will parade at 3 a.m.,’ the next day. On the same evening that these orders are read to the companies, a detachment has marched away, with the camp color-men and the married people; the former to lay out the lines of the camp, the latter to be out of the way of the regiment. I always sent on a tent to be pitched by my own native servants, and, when we arrived at the camping ground in the morning, we found everything ready. What luxurious tents these were! Each one consisted of a drawing-room, bed-room, and dressing-room, with a broad verandah, formed by an outer covering. Indian servants have a wonderful knack of arranging a room. As the tent we slept in was denuded of all furniture, excepting beds and a chair or two, when we arrived in the morning, we entered apparently the same sitting-room we had occupied the previous day. Not a book was in a different place--everything was the same. On some marches we rode in advance of the regiment, on others we drove in my wife’s carriage; but, whichever way we travelled, we enjoyed ourselves much. The Grand Trunk road of India, along which we were journeying, was the finest made road in the world, smooth, and level as a billiard-table. Ten to twelve miles was the average length of a day’s march.