While we remained encamped at Pusah, among other means adopted to beguile the weary hours, races and steeplechases were “got up”; and as the place had an excellent course, and the weather was delightful and exhilarating, the pastime helped to dispel grumblings, and in some instances imaginary grievances which inaction had commenced to sow.
So passed a few days, each of which brought with it both its amusements and its anxieties. Before a week had terminated, however, it was evident by the hurry-skurry prevailing in the striking of tents and packing of baggage that an immediate headlong rush to the Nipal frontier was in store for us. So we started at once, and jogged along throughout the night, and by daylight, finding the baggage animals keeping well up, we marched on for a few hours longer, and then halted for the day amidst a fertile country verdant with waving crops of several kinds.
I shall pass rapidly over the stages travelled during the ensuing few days, as their monotony was only dispelled on our entering the district of Purneah. Here the features of the country changed alternately from rich cultivated fields, to immense grass plains; and from those again to enormous crops of ripening scarlet chillies, which gave the whole landscape a bloodshot appearance of a singular and — as times were — very appropriate effect.
We also passed incalculable acres of poppy fields, and their variegated bloom of red, white, and purple in the golden sunlight adorned a sublimely pretty
