have done—our grief for the King, and are stamping rupees with Victoria’s head on them. That is a great national measure on the occasion, and I heard the mint man acutely remark, ‘Now I wish we had never changed the stamp; I should not wonder if the natives were to mistrust a coin with nothing but a woman's head on it.’ We should naturally be living under William IV. if the last overland despatch had not reached us in less than two months, and that makes us very precocious in our English knowledge.
We are on the brink of going up the country. We expect to set off about this day five weeks, and B is doing what may be called pulling our chairs from under us in the most ruthless manner. Horses, carriages, servants, howdahs, all our small comforts, are to be sent on to-morrow to Benares, where, I believe, our camp is to be formed; for, as we are to be towed there by a steamer, they will be some weeks longer going. I don’t think you have been here for the last two or three days, and you might as well have come this morning. I have found it utterly impossible to settle to anything, even to write this letter.
