Coolies Not Being Procurable In Sufficient Numbers To Carry Away
All Our Stores Together, F. And I Agreed To Start In The Morning,
Leaving The Head Of Affairs With The Rearguard To Follow At His
Leisure.
Got away at last in two "palkees," with four "banghy
wallahs," or baggage-bearers, carrying our immediate possessions,
guns,
&C. Spent the night wretchedly enough, the roads being of the
worst, and covered nearly a foot deep everywhere with fine dust,
which our bearers very soon stirred up into an impenetrable cloud,
enveloping us in its folds to the verge of suffocation.
The sensation is strange enough, travelling in this way along a lonely
road at dead of night, closely shut up in an oblong box, and surrounded
by some twenty or more dusky savages, who could quietly tap one on
the head at any time, and appropriate the bag of rupees - inseparable
from Indian travelling - without the slightest difficulty. That they
do not do so is probably from the knowledge they possess that with
the bag of rupees there is generally to be found a revolver, and that
an English traveller is of so generous a disposition that he seldom
parts from his money without giving a little lead in with the silver.
JUNE 10. - After a dusty jolt of forty miles, we reached "Gugerwalla"
at eight A.M., and felt the change from Lahore most refreshing. The
village seemed a quiet little settlement, very little visited by
Englishmen, and the inhabitants, probably on that account, appeared
of a different stamp from those we had hitherto met.
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