My dear Wilmot,
I have now, since the middle of last June, pretty nearly seen the eastern, northern, and western extremities of British India, having been to Dacca and Almorah, and having now arrived within a few days’ march of Ahmedabad, visiting by the way several of the most important, independant, or tributary principalities.
Of the way of performing this long journey, I was myself very imperfectly informed before I began it, and even then it was long before I could believe how vast and cumbersome an apparatus of attendance and supplies of every kind was necessary to travel in any degree of comfort or security. On the river, indeed, so long as that lasted, one’s progress is easy and pleasant, (bating a little heat and a few storms,) carried on by a strong south-eastern breeze, in a very roomy and comfortable boat, against the stream of a majestic body of water; but it is after leaving the Ganges for the land-journey that, if not “the tug,” yet no small part of the apparatus, proventus et commeatus, of “war” commences.
It has been my wish, on many accounts, to travel without unnecessary display; my tents, equipments, and number of servants, are all on the smallest scale which comfort or propriety would
