ive days ago.[43] He went to see them on board
their transport before they disembarked, and when Lord Canning asked
how he found them, replied that the only thing amiss was that they had
become too fat on the voyage, and could not button their coats. But,
indeed, all the troops of the China force have been landed in the
highest possible condition of health and vigour. The 23rd, from its
large proportion of young soldiers, is perhaps the one most likely
to suffer from the climate and the hardships of the Service--for,
although no care or cost will be spared to keep them in health and
comfort, Lord Canning fears that hardships there must be, seeing how
vast an extent of usually productive country will be barren for a
time, and that the districts from which some of our most valuable
supplies, especially the supply of carriage animals, are drawn,
have been stripped bare, or are still in revolt. As it is, the
Commander-in-Chief has most wisely reduced the amount of tent
accommodation for officers and men far below the ordinary luxurious
Indian allowance.

The presence of the ships of the Royal Navy has been of the greatest
service. At least eleven thousand seamen and marines have been
contributed by them for duty on shore, and the broadsides of the
_Sanspareil_, _Shannon_, and _Pearl_, as they lie along the esplanade,
have had a very reassuring effect upon the inhabitants of Calcutta,
who, until lately, have insisted pertinaciously that their lives and
property were in hourly danger.[44]

No line-of-battle ship has been seen in the Hooghly since Admiral
Watson sailed up to Chandernagore just a hundred years ago;[45] and
certainly nothing in his fleet was equal to the _Sanspareil_. The
natives stare at her, and call her "the four-storied boat."

For the future, if Delhi should fall and Lucknow be secured, the work
of pacification will go forward steadily. Many points will have to be
watched, and there may be occasional resistance; but nothing like
an organised contest against authority is probable. The greatest
difficulties will be in the civil work of re-settlement. The recent
death of Mr Colvin,[46] the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western
Provinces, has removed an officer whose experience would there have
been most valuable. He has died, fairly exhausted; and is the fourth
officer of high trust whose life has given way in the last four
months.

One of the greatest difficulties which lie ahead--and Lord Canning
gr