d
the receipt of a reply! On January 5th, 1770, Robert Nairne writes from
Marlborough, India, acknowledging a letter from his brother John, only
recently received, dated April 21, 1767. The brothers discuss family
news and family plans, their old father's health, the desirability of
settling down at home in Scotland, the life each is living, remote from
that home. Though an officer, Robert engaged in trade and made some
money. "The Company's pay is hardly subsistence," he says, "and here we
have not, as on t'other side of India the spoils of plundered provinces
to grow fat on. I keep my health very well and if I want the
satisfaction, I am also free from many Anxietys, people are subject to
who are more in the glare of life." He was in a retired place, where
there were few people and perennial summer, with "no variety of seasons
nor of anything else." Time passes insensibly, he says; "in India years
are like months in Europe ... I write, read, walk and go in company the
same round nearly throughout the year. Here we have little company; yet
everyone wants to go to out settlements where they are quite alone. I
cannot account for it. Mal Bay is your out settlement. Do you like that
as well as Quebec?"

Robert Nairne was something of a philosopher. "Have you ever so much
philosophy," he writes to the seigneur of Murray Bay in 1767, "as to
think everything that happens is for the best? I am so far of that mind
that content and discontent I think arises [_sic_] rather from the cast
of our own thoughts than from outward accidents and that there is nearly
an equal distribution of the means of happiness to all men, and that
they are the happiest that improve their means the most." He felt the
weariness of exile, the Scot's longing for his own land. "Certainly to a
person of a right tone of mind if there are enjoyments in life, it must
be in our own country amongst our friends and relations. With such
conditions the bare necessaries of life are better than riches without
them.... Death is but a limited absence and you and I are much in that
state with regard to our friends at home."

It was not long before Robert Nairne's letters ceased altogether. In
1776, John Nairne received at Murray Bay the sad news that, in November
or December, 1774, his brother had been killed in a petty expedition
against some local tribesmen. A native chieftain had murdered, cooked
and eaten a rival who was friendly to the East India Company and Rober