take place towards the Punjab; a movement which received a further impulse from the annexation of Oudh in 1856.
This process has gradually completed itself. The once strong cantonment of Barrackpur, sixteen miles from Calcutta, is now a charming suburb for the merchants and British citizens of the metropolis, pleasantly diversified by uniforms, but more vitally concerned in the matter of monthly railway tickets than in any military problem. Chinsurah, ten miles further up the Húgli, with its magnificent accommodation for European troops and invalids, is now a solitude of palatial barracks without a soldier. The cordon of military stations which stretched across Lower Bengal, are abandoned for strategic positions in Oudh, the Punjab, and the Central Provinces. Native soldiers are dotted here and there in the Lower Gangetic valley, but the nearest place of military strength is Dinápur, 344 miles by railway, or 636 by the old river-route from the capital. I have seen the handsome and spacious mess-house of a Bengal station offered at auction for £40, and eventually knocked down for the value of the venetians and glass in its folding doors and windows.
With this alteration in the political and military centre of gravity in India, Calcutta has ceased to be the continuous seat of the Supreme Government. The Governor-General found it necessary to be
