six men who were with me what I was waiting for, and thinking they might suppose I was gone mad and put me out of my pain. It certainly is tiresome not being able to speak the language of the country one lives in, but as for attempting to learn their gibberish I can’t. I get such horrible fits at times (particularly when I am driving out) of thinking that we are gone back to an entirely savage state, and are at least 3000 years behind the rest of the world. I take all the naked black creatures squatting at the doors of their huts in such aversion, and what with the paroquets, and the jackals, and the vultures, which settle in crowds on the dead bodies that are thrown on the banks of the river, and what with the climate and the strange trees and shrubs, I feel all Robinson Crusoe-ish. I cannot abide India, and that is the truth, and it is almost come to not abiding in India. When I think, what I thought of a long sea-voyage, and yet look back upon it as pleasant compared to this life, and when I long to go in every little brig that goes down the river homeward-bound, I can only calculate how strong my aversion must be to ‘the land we live in.’ I suppose it is partly not feeling
