street of tents, the camp gong would begin to toll as a Church bell, and at the appointed hour, the European officers and their families, the guests, the Native Christians in the camp, would all assemble in the long reception-tent, and there, in the absence of a clergyman, Thomason himself would read the Services of the Church for the day[1].
For the marching routes, the main or trunk road from Benares to Delhi would be either macadamized or in the course of becoming so. But apart from this great artery, the subsidiary lines, like the veins in the system, would be nothing more than the soil smoothed or levelled. The rivers, such as the Ganges at Benares and Allahábád, the Jumna at Agra and Delhi, are now spanned by railway viaducts; but in those days the only crossing consisted of temporary bridges of boats, or pontoons thrown across the stream, and maintained merely for the winter months, when the waters would be low.
On the line of march the daily change of scene prevents monotony being felt even in those districts, which from their flatness would ordinarily be deemed monotonous. The heart or centre of these Provinces, the 'Doáb' or Mesopotamia of the Ganges and the Jumna, is an even expanse. For two hundred miles and more this uniformly fertile, highly cultivated and densely peopled tract would by some travellers be
- ↑ The discourses which he used to read were taken from the Parochial Sermons by the Rev. E. Cooper, Rector of Yoxall, Staffordshire.
