[Sidenote: JOURNEY TO BENARES.]

After a short stay in Calcutta, we set out for Benares. The journey was
performed in a new fashion. We purchased a conveyance, and arranged to
have it drawn by relays of coolies all the way. Arrangements were made
by an agent in Calcutta to have word sent on in advance, so that at
every sixth or eighth mile coolies might be in readiness for us. Before
1839 the great Trunk Road from Calcutta to Delhi had been made, but the
streams and ravines were for the most part unbridged, and consequently
travelling by a wheeled conveyance was very slow and difficult. By 1854
the road had been greatly improved, many bridges had been made, and thus
the facilities for travelling were much increased. At every twelve or
fourteen miles there were rest-houses for European travellers, called
"staging bungalows," all built on the same plan at the expense of two
wealthy natives, each with two rooms and a bath-room attached, a
bedstead in each room, a table, and two or three chairs, with a man in
charge to take a small sum from each traveller for accommodation, and
ready to furnish him with a good Indian meal at a very moderate rate. At
some of these we stopped for rest and food. Our party consisted of our
family, and a lady friend who wished to travel with us. Desirous to get
on quickly, we were sometimes in our conveyance twenty hours out of the
twenty-four, and dosed as we proceeded the best way we could. We met
with no adventure worth relating, and were glad after ten days'
journeying to find ourselves once more in our old dear abode. We had a
most hearty and gratifying welcome from our brethren, both European and
native. We reached it on a Saturday. I told the brethren that after my
long absence, and entire disuse of the native language during that
period, I must be a hearer the next day. They said that could not be, as
the people were expecting me to officiate. Thus urged I ventured to
conduct the service, and I was agreeably surprised to find that old
scenes seemed to revive my knowledge of the language, and to bear me
through with unexpected ease.

We resumed work at Benares recruited in health, and refreshed in spirit,
and prepared by the experience of previous years to prosecute it with
new effectiveness. We had a sense of the difficulties of the work, its
trials and discouragements, and of the absolute necessity of Divine help
in order to its being rightly prosecuted, which we could not have had at