e
favourite with all on board, and more particularly with us lads. He
was full of fun, and although then forty-seven years old, and on his
way to Calcutta to join the Governor-General's Council, he took part
in our amusements as if he were of the same age as ourselves. His
career in India was brilliant, and on the expiration of his term of
office as member of Council he was made Chief Justice of Bengal.
Another of the passengers was Colonel (afterwards Sir John Bloomfield)
Gough, who died not long ago in Ireland, and was then on his way to
take up his appointment as Quartermaster-General of Queen's troops. He
had served in the 3rd Light Dragoons and on the staff of his cousin,
Lord Gough, during the Sutlej and Punjab campaigns, and was naturally
an object of the deepest veneration to all the youngsters on board.

At Madras we stopped to land passengers, and I took this opportunity
of going on shore to see some old Addiscombe friends, most of whom
were greatly excited at the prospect of a war in Burma. The transports
were then actually lying in the Madras roads, and a few days later
this portion of the expedition started for Rangoon.

At last, on the 1st April, we reached Calcutta, and I had to say
good-bye to the friends I had made during the six weeks' voyage, most
of whom I was never to meet again.

On landing, I received a letter from my father, who commanded the
Lahore division, informing me that the proprietor of Spence's Hotel
had been instructed to receive me, and that I had better put up there
until I reported myself at the Head-Quarters of the Bengal Artillery
at Dum-Dum. This was chilling news, for I was the only one of our
party who had to go to a hotel on landing. The Infantry cadets had
either been taken charge of by the Town Major, who provided them with
quarters in Fort William, or had gone to stay with friends, and the
only other Artilleryman (Stewart) went direct to Dum-Dum, where he
had a brother, also a gunner, who, poor follow, was murdered with his
young wife five years later by the mutineers at Gwalior. I was still
more depressed later on by finding myself at dinner _tete-a-tete_
with a first-class specimen of the results of an Indian climate.
He belonged to my own regiment, and was going home on medical
certificate, but did not look as if he could ever reach England. He
gave me the not too pleasing news that by staying in that dreary
hotel, instead of proceeding direct to Dum-Dum, I had lost a