crocodiles, floriken, black partridge, and other game. Even for people in good health it was, at that season of the year, a mad expedition, and I declined going; I longed indeed to accompany them, but my cold and cough were so severe I was forced to give up the idea.
18th.—My dear Colonel Gardner, seeing how ill I was, said, "You will never recover, my child, in the outer house; I will give you a room in the inner one, and put you under the care of the begam; there you will soon recover." He took me over to the zenāna; the begam received me very kindly, and appointed four of her slaves to attend upon me, and aid my own women. They put me immediately into a steam-bath, shampooed, mulled, and half-boiled me; cracked every joint after the most approved fashion, took me out, laid me on a golden-footed bed, gave me sherbet to drink, shampooed me to sleep, and by the time the shooting party returned from the Gunga, I had perfectly recovered, and was able to enter into all the amusement of seeing a Hindostanee wedding.
I must here anticipate, and remark that Suddu Khan, our excellent little khansamannsāmān?], died in June, 1841. He had been ill and unable to attend for months. There is a story, that being in an hummām, he received some injury in the spine while being shampooed and joint-cracked by a barber, who placed his knee to his back, and then forcibly brought his two arms backwards. The story says poor Suddu fainted, and the barber was so much alarmed, he fled, and has never been seen since at Cawnpore, where the scene took place.
