folk in the Punjab, and had
long been the despair of Government. On arrival at Delhi they were
employed in the trenches, rushing in to fill up the places of the killed
and wounded as fast as they fell. It will be remembered that they formed
the fatigue party who carried the powder-bags to blow up the Cashmere
Gate. A hundred and fifty-seven of them were killed during the siege.
With this brilliant opening it is no wonder that they have been on
active service almost continually since.

A frontier campaign would be incomplete without the 32nd or 23rd. It was
the 32nd who cut their way through 5 feet of snow, and carried the
battery guns to the relief of Chitral. The 23rd Pioneers were also
raised from the Mazbi Sikhs in the same year of the Mutiny, 1857. The
history of the two regiments is very similar. The 23rd distinguished
themselves in China, Abyssinia, Afghanistan, and numerous frontier
campaigns. One of the most brilliant exploits was when, with the Gordon
Highlanders under Major (now Sir George) White, they captured the Afghan
guns at Kandahar. To-day the men of the two regiments meet again as
members of the same corps on the Lingmathang Plain. Naturally the most
cordial relations exist between the men, and one can hear them
discussing old campaigns as they sit round their pinewood fires in the
evenings. They and the twenty men of the 8th Gurkhas (of Manipur fame)
turn out together every morning for exercise on their diminutive steeds.
They ride without saddle or stirrups, and though they have only been
horsemen for two months, they seldom fall off at the jumps. The other
day, when a Mazbi Sikh took a voluntary into the hedge, a genial Gurkha
reminded him of the eccentric order 'to practise riding in carts.'

At Lingmathang we have had a fair amount of sport of a desultory kind.
The neighbouring forests are the home of that very rare and little-known
animal, the shao, or Sikkim stag. The first animal of the species to
fall to a European gun was shot by Major Wallace Dunlop on the
Lingmathang Hills in January. A month later Captain Ottley wounded a
buck which he was not able to follow up on account of a heavy fall of
snow. Lately one or two shao--does in all cases--have come down to visit
the plain. While we were breakfasting on the morning of the 16th, we
heard a great deal of shouting and halloaing, and a Gurkha jemadar ran
up to tell us that a female shao, pursued by village dogs, had broken
through the jungle o