Page:John Russell Colvin.djvu/79

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ENTRIES IN DIARY
71

man can work, they will plod to their homes in obscurity.

During the five months which elapsed between October 21 and March 31, events beyond the frontier had been from their side marching, too, to meet the coming camp. But there remain a word or two to be gleaned from Mr. Colvin's diary. At Patná, as he passed up the river, the Private Secretary had seen General Ventura, a French officer in Sikh employ, who assured him of the Mahárájá Ranjít Singh's devotion to the British, and warned him against Burnes's loquacity. At Cawnpur, Sir Charles Metcalfe, the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Provinces, presented himself, only to take his leave; and thenceforth, for the two ensuing years, the Governor-General of India became also the titular Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West. Other affairs of great pith and moment were to occupy Lord Auckland in 1838 and 1839; and the conduct of the North-West administration was practically left in the competent hands of its Secretary, Mr. James Thomason, Mr. Colvin's former superior. From that time its affairs pour their full stream into those channels of the Private Secretary's diary through which the business of Bengal had hitherto flowed. There crowd into its pages terms unfamiliar in the Lower Province: thirty years' settlements, coparcenary tenures, resumption of revenue-free holdings, Act IX of 1833, all the jargon familiar to the Civil Officer in Upper India. New names, too, especially