determination, but the ability to maintain our supremacy in India
against all assailants.

If these cardinal points are never lost sight of, there is, I believe,
little chance of any fresh outbreak disturbing the stability of our
rule in India, or neutralizing our efforts to render that country
prosperous, contented, and thoroughly loyal to the British Crown.

[Footnote 1: Few acts have been more keenly resented than the closing
of the great Hurdwar Fair in the autumn of 1892, on account of a
serious outbreak of cholera. It was looked upon by the Natives as a
direct blow aimed at their religion, and as a distinct departure from
the religious tolerance promised in Her Majesty's proclamation of
1858. The mysterious mud marks on mango-trees in Behar have been
attributed by some to a self-interested motive on the part of certain
priests to draw the attention of Hindus to the sanctity of some temple
outside the limits of British jurisdiction, where the devotees would
be at liberty to assemble in any numbers without being troubled by
officious inspectors, and where they could remain as long as they
pleased, irrespective of the victims daily claimed by cholera, that
unfailing avenger of the neglect of sanitary laws in the east.]

[Footnote 2: The proposal would seem to be quite a practical one, for
I read in the _Times_ of the 28th November, 1894, that the Government
of New Zealand invited applications for Consols in connexion with the
scheme for granting loans at a reasonable rate of interest to farmers
on the security of their holdings.]

[Footnote 3: I allude to the Parsis, who came from Persia, and whose
religion and customs are as distinct from those of the Natives of
India as are our own.]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXII.
1858-1859

Home again--Back in India--Allahabad and Cawnpore
--The Viceroy's camp--State entry into Lucknow
--The Talukdars of Oudh--Loyalty of the Talukdars
--Cawnpore and Fatehgarh--The Agra Durbar

I travelled home _via_ Corfu, Trieste, Venice, and Switzerland,
arriving in England towards the end of June. The intense delight
of getting 'home' after one's first term of exile can hardly be
exaggerated, and certainly cannot be realized, save by those who have
gone through the exile, and been separated, as I had been for years,
from all that made the happiness of my early life. Every English tree
and flower one comes across on first landing is a