as every part of the ship
was taken up for the troops, and the captain of the vessel would not
accommodate me under a thousand rupees--a sum which I had not to give. A
smaller foreign ship would have brought both myself and child home for
what the Company allow for officers sent home--fifteen hundred rupees.
By this I was deprived of the satisfaction of bringing home my child,
who remains in India with my brother-in-law to this day.

In the beginning of the month of April, 1825, I embarked on board the
free-trader, _Euphrates_, Captain Mead commanding, with an insufficient
crew, as they did not exceed twenty-three hands in all, and winter was
before us for the whole voyage. This would not have been a very pleasant
prospect to the shattered nerves of an old Indian; but mine, although I
had been so many years in that hot country, did not come under that
description, and I had learnt long since to endure hardships. I was
never much addicted to look on the dark side of things, but now it was
impossible to refrain from thinking of the situation in which I stood. I
was proceeding to a country, and that country my native home; but it was
not endeared to me by a solitary relative that I knew of. I could not
help comparing the close of my military career with its commencement. I
was then friendless and isolated; and who had I now but those who
mourned my departure from a land which I was compelled to quit for ever?
I left England, when a child, without one friend or relative to bid me
adieu, and I was now returning to it without one to bid me welcome! Yet
there is something pleasing to every British bosom, in the anticipation
of returning to the land of one's birth; and, although my prospects were
anything but bright, I felt, notwithstanding, that I could be content to
live in my native country, even in poverty. But the necessity which
compelled me to leave behind me my two sweet babes distressed me
exceedingly, and my eye seemed riveted on the arid sand along the banks
of the river that had some few days before borne my boy from my sight.
On the spot on which we parted I gazed with indescribable sensations,
and I found that the more I gazed the dearer it grew in my estimation.
There are few who have not experienced delight in revisiting, after many
years' absence, the scenes of their childhood. When I returned to my
native land from India, in the year 1807, after an absence of twelve
years, I was proceeding home to visit my fami