The fire-places have other defects. Sometimes the crackling wood projects sparks into the middle of the tent; and the average time that it takes to wipe out a tent when fairly aflame is four minutes. The spark difficulty, however, can be overcome by wire guards, and so far I have only heard of three tents suffering destruction. But a new pattern of lamp stove, with which the smaller tents are equipped, is infinitely preferable. It is not the people in the big marquees, but those in the trim little Swiss Cottage tents, who are most comfortably off when the temperature falls. If you treat the lamp stove tenderly, it gives you reasonable warmth. If you don't—most people don't—it diffuses an odour of kerosene until your tent suggests the business premises of an Italian warehouseman.
But you will be lucky if you do not live in an atmosphere of kerosene in any case; for there are the white ants to be reckoned with also. You awake in the morning to be greeted with the pleasing intelligence that an army of these pertinacious insects has eaten through a cabin trunk, and has just concluded a banquet upon your only frock-coat. Then there is a hasty lifting of dhurries and matting, and kerosene is recklessly poured upon the layer of grey sand from the Jumna upon which every tent has been erected. There seems to be a legend in Delhi that fine sand from the Jumna is to the white ant anathema, and that it will not take up its abode where the sand is strewn. Hear now the conclusion of the whole matter from
