running upwards, like a Mongolian ; his complexion is fair, and in his small white pugree and red velvet dress he looks like a gentleman. He is much improved since I saw him at Delhi, looking stronger and altogether bigger. Captain Clarke makes him take exercise and ride, and, above all, eat wholesome things. As a Moslem, he can eat with us English, and this makes it much easier to look after him than- after a Hindoo boy, like his High- ness of Mysore, who is stuffed with ghee, sugar, and rice in the Zenana, where we dare not penetrate, and who is not allowed by caste to eat with his tutors. This boy is most active and plucky, as I will tell you by next mail. 5th December.
My first visit to the Nizam was merely one of ceremony, to appoint the hour of sitting, &c. ; and, having fixed for 8 a.m. the next day, I made my salaam and retired. I was to breakfast with the Minister, Sir Salar Jung, at ten, and have a sitting from His Excellency afterwards. In the afternoon I drove out to a dinner at Holaram, given by the 12th in honour of the Meades. Bolaram is beyond the Secunderabad cantonment, where we have a strong division of troops to overawe the supposed discontented population of Hyderabad. It is ten miles out. The road is pretty, rising gradually 400 feet, with ridge after ridge of stony ground. Secunderabad is of course, like all other cantonments, a gathering of ghastly white barracks, which even the gold of the setting sun could hardly render picturesque. However, the hospitality of the 1 2th was unbounded; the dinner was followed by a dance, and the evening passed pleasantly enough. I was not home till 1.30 a.m., and, as I had not been in bed for two nights, I was not sorry to draw my mosquito-curtain round me and sleep.
Up at half-past six to go to the Nizam. The same drive through the streets, the same affable gentleman to take me by the arm, and I am in the palace again. I find the Azure,* as he is called, playing at lawn tennis. He will make really a good
I spell this as pronounced, but I suppose it should be, more properly, "huzoor," meaning "the presence," or " His Highness."
