I had put the finishing touch to my preparations.
The carriage was too much warped
by the fierce sun to be entirely water-tight;
but I pressed down the front window with
my feet, holding the side ports with my
hands, and by such exertions weathered the
storm nobly.

We travelled night and day; the cushioned
floor of the Dawk formed a very good bed,
and I could sleep well, subject of course to
the interruption incident to a periodical
clamour caused by the starting of a horse.
The horses were throughout the line bad,
and the contractors, I suspect, too often
dishonest. There were frequent difficulties
raised over the getting of a horse at all; in
a stable that contained three, two might be
sick, and one weary from over-work. There
was no rest for the weary; he must in that
case walk his stage. The best horses were
in bad condition. To persuade an animal to
start was often the work of five or six men
aiding the whip of the driver on the box,
some beating the poor beast, one pulling at
his head, one perhaps at his leg, another
pushing at a wheel, and all pouring out
benediction and malediction, persuasion,
entreaty and command with vast volubility. He
was their child, their son, their brother, their
good uncle, their esteemed brother-in-law.
He was a gentleman: he was a pig, a
prince: he was a something unutterably bad,
and so were all his ancestors for several
generations, and relations ever so many
degrees removed. Would his highness be pleased
to budge? When he did move, it was sometimes
to run away. On such occasions we
could complete a stage at the rate of ten
miles an hour. Sometimes he walked his
distance, but he rarely stopped, unless he
thoroughly broke down upon the road. Bad
as the horses are, they are perhaps as good as
can be furnished for the money; better cattle
would be very costly on so long a line, and
perhaps good horses would be used up quite
as soon as the sorry animals now furnished.
As it is, we are justified in regarding this
kind of travel on the Grand Trunk Road
as wonderful for India; the rate being
a trifle over a hundred miles a day (of
twenty-four hours), and the cost not great
—about threepence halfpenny a mile.
There are also good rest houses, or Dawk
Bungalows, provided at not infrequent
intervals.

At midnight, after my first day of journeying,
I was pacing under the moon before an
inhospitable door at Burdwan, waiting until
some sleep-bewildered agent had regained
activity enough to read and to write entries
in the bokhara or waybill. He kept me at his
door for an hour; and, afterwards, I always
knew where there was an agent of the
Transit Company by the detention to which
I was subjected. These gentlemen were a
kind of road bogies: I felt their malign
influence, but never saw them.

Again in the same night I awoke suddenly,
and found all still and quiet. "Coachman,"
I cried, "what is the matter now? Why are
we not moving?" No answer. No coachman.
No sound even of the horse. I opened
one side-door and looked out. I perceived
only darkness, drizzle, and a wide gleam
of water. I looked out on the other side:
darkness, drizzle, and a wider gleam of water.
Coachman and syce (groom) gone; horse
gone; traveller left to wake up in the middle
of a flood, swamp, lake, river, I knew not what.
After a time, however, I heard voices and
the splash of an approaching horse. Coachman
and syce had been far away to get him
from a distant stable, and perhaps to have a
nap and pipe at the same time.

Again in that night I awoke. We seemed
to be grinding our way slowly through sand
and shingle, in the bed of a shallow river,
under a dark tunnel that hung close over our
heads. There was much noise and shouting.
When I was thoroughly aroused by it, I
found that we were working, with the aid of
coolies, over a piece of newly repaired road.
The sand and shingle I found to be kunkur,
or the concrete used for metalling. The
tunnel was the darkness of the night under a
leaden sky. At sunrise we were still working
along, by the aid of coolies, at the rate of a
mile and a half an hour, over the newly
repaired road.

At the end of the first twenty-four hours I
had advanced ninety miles upon my journey;
and, happening then to arrive near a Dawk
bungalow, or, as it is called officially, a
staging bungalow, I considered that I had
leisure to put in and refresh. These bungalows
are built by Government for the accommodation,
at fixed rates, of the higher grades
of travellers. One of them generally contains
two separate suites of apartments, a dining,
sitting and bedroom, and a dressing and bath
room;—the last being the most essential.
The furniture is not more than a bed, a table,
two or three chairs, and the bathing-room
apparatus. There is an establishment of
servants, a khansuman or steward, a bearer,
cook and sweeper.

On driving up to the door of the building,
I was met in due form by the steward; who,
with a respectful introductory salaam, desired
to know what he should prepare for my
refreshment. I had often heard jokes on the
subject of Dawk bungalow refreshment,
respecting, especially, the assurances of the
steward that he has anything and everything,
and his final production of a tough hen
eaten twenty minutes after her last cluck.
Those jokes refer perhaps to a past time.
The stewards of to-day profess only to have
fowl, and are surprised if any other article is
mentioned. The question " What shall I
prepare?" means simply, "How shall I
prepare it? Shall the bird of the bungalow
be roasted, boiled, grilled, stewed or curried?"
I changed the mode of cooking at each