ENCES IN INDIA.

In August, 1849, when I had been living at Calcutta nearly three
years, I was warned by my doctor that I must go on a sea-voyage or
else to the Himalaya Mountains, if life was an object with me. Such it
was, and very keenly. The four-and-twenty years of it which I had
divided between study and rollicking had approved themselves, like
this poor old world when it was new, "very good," and I had a strong
objection to parting with it on so short an acquaintance. True, my
hepatic apparatus, as the doctors grandly call the liver, had got
miserably out of gear, though I was a water-drinker, and though I had
a wholesome horror of tropical sunshine. But I had a good
constitution, and I had the word of the medical faculty for it that
many a man with not half so good a one as mine had pulled through a
much worse condition than I was in. To go away somewhere, however, was
proposed as my only alternative to migrating down to the hideous
cemetery among the bogs and jackals of Chowringhee. But where should I
go? After having been shot once and drowned twice when a boy, I had
been ship-wrecked at the mouth of the sacred and accursed Ganges, and
had just escaped with my life and Greek lexicon. Shooting--and I may
throw in hanging--I felt proof against, and as for drowning, I had no
fear of that. Nevertheless, I had been very near five months in coming
out from Boston under the blundering seamanship of Captain Coffin
(ominous cognomen!), and salt water, hard junk and weevilly biscuit
were as unattractive to me in possible prospect as they were in
retrospect. The sea I had weighed in the balance and had found it much
wanting. I would, then, go to the Himalayas.

So I prepared to make for Simla, which, however, I never saw, nor had
occasion to see, my liver complaint seeming to have been left behind,
with my good wishes, in the City of Palaces. In the early days of
Indian civilization to which I refer the most convenient way of
journeying on high-roads was by palanquin. One of the black
packing-cases so called was purchased, and an arrangement entered
into, after the custom of the country, with the post-office to have
relays of bearers provided on the road at stated times and places.
Thus, I was to go as far as Ghazeepore, where I had a friend living,
and there I was to give due notice if I wished to proceed farther.
Traveling in India has so frequently been a subject of description
that I shall not describe it anew. I