It was bitterly cold when I started off in the pallid dawn, before the sun had hoisted itself above the shoulder of the Ridge. My driver was a man of owlishly vacuous mind, who did not even know the road to the Kutab Minar; but one could scarcely miss a whole Army, one thought. The dismal streets just inside the western wall of Delhi were already astir when we clattered through them. Native quarters in India never present such a scene of unredeemed squalor as at daybreak, before the sunlight has lit up their rich colouring. It was a relief to pass under one of the massive gates of the city, and leave the great walls behind. Needless to say, we had not got a mile beyond the city before the driver expressed blank ignorance of his whereabouts. We pressed onwards by the first road we came to; it might not be the right one, but anyway it led south. A thick haze shut in the view on either side; it was hard to see a couple of hundred yards in any direction; evidently that Army was going to take some finding. Gaunt ruins loomed up at intervals through the mist, for modern Delhi is simply a city set in the midst of the sites of half a dozen other cities abandoned to the lizard and the squirrel. The road was cumbered with creaking carts laden with forage and a medley of furniture. Surely there was no more Durbar Camp here? The Amphitheatre was unknown miles away, to the north of the city.
Yet so it proved; and all along this road were planted, if you please, the camps of the Bombay
