COMMON INCIDENTS. 23 



not an observing traveller. My arguments prevailed ; the coach ar- 

 rived, we took our seats, and away away we sped. 



Every one knows that the first quarter of an hour's conversation in 

 a stage coach, at starting, is always engrossed by local topics; I mean 

 local, as applied to the scene we have just left, and to that passing 

 before us. In about twenty-five minutes the General " broke ground," 

 by some slight allusions to India mere casual remarks, contrasting 

 the season and scenery before us, with the blazing brilliance of that 

 enchanted and fairy land ; from this he naturally deviated to touch 

 upon the picturesque, the descriptive, and at length upon his own 

 professional career. I breathed hard, for I foresaw that a prosing 

 " moonsoon" was setting in, and experience had taught me the na- 

 ture and weight of the infliction, when arrived at its full swing. 



In self-defence, I rapidly began a conversation in French with my 

 fellow-traveller, the student. There could be no impropriety or ill 

 manners attributable to this course, because a retired Indian of that 

 rank ought to understand French no offence was taken. By degrees 

 the General, taking advantage of pauses in our conversation, began 

 by warping the conversation towards the mother country from 

 thence to the Pacific Ocean ; eastward^ and still eastward he strained 

 it, by the power of his unwearied " capstan/' till the sounds of Tili- 

 chery and Calicut fell upon my astounded ear, like the first bomb 

 upon the citadel of Antwerp. The Ghauts, Poonah, Aurungabad 

 the whole of the Mysore country, followed thick and fast; I was 

 agonized. I had often visited, personally, the whole geographical 

 area he described ; more, I had heard him go over the same ground, 

 on board ship, many a weary time. Now, by an immense land-slip, 

 he transported us to that garden of India Guzzerat ; and he was 

 just on the point of plunging us in the gulph of ditch, when a loud 

 volley of cries for the coachman to stop, echoed from behind. A 

 sailor had fallen from his "high estate," and was squatted on his 

 mother earth, two hundred yards astern. The coachman pulled up, 

 amidst a cloud of curses ; the guard retraced his way, to pick the 

 man up ; he was not at all hurt only drunk. How thankful I was 

 for this episode ; who shall describe my relief? It was as scraped 

 potatoes to a scorched limb magnesian draught to the wretch who 

 has swallowed oil of vitriol. Not the green-grocer's porter, who, ac- 

 cording to the advertisement in the Evangelical Magazine, is war- 

 ranted to ' e fear God, and carry one hundred weight of turnips," for 

 miles, upon a narrow obstructed pavement not the locomotive fish- 

 retailer, who carries the same weight from Billingsgate to Battersea 

 not one of these can view the end of his toil, with half the joy that 

 " extacized" me, when l( Stop, coachman, stop !" broke upon my 

 staggering senses. In five minutes more the general would have 

 crossed the deserts, and encamped us under the walls of Isphahan ! 



The coach again proceeded. I lost no time in striking in upon a 

 point of science with my French eleve, where I knew the General 

 could not follow us. I persevered, I heated myself on the topic, I 

 made the most extravagant observations, drew the most ludicrous and 

 inapposite conclusions, with a view to elicit the gesticulations and 

 rapid verbosity of the Frenchman. He smiled and stared alterna- 



