30 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



From tlie same place lie writes on December 

 26: "We are resting here comfortably again in 

 our tents, and had a turkey for our Christmas dinner 

 last night. The rest is most grateful. We had 

 only nine hours in bed out of five nights, and then 

 the next four were on the ground. So you see I 

 have come in for the realities of a soldier's life 

 pretty early in my career ; and since I am spared, 

 it is doubtless a great thing for me in every way. 

 There never has been anything like it in India, and 

 it is not often that an action anyivhere has lasted 

 thirty-six hours as ours did. It is called a suc- 

 cession of three engagements, but the firing never 

 ceased for a quarter of an hour. Infantry attacking 

 guns was the order of the day, and the loss occa- 

 sioned by such a desperate resort was fearful. 



" How different," he continues, " your Christmas 

 week will have been from mine ! This time last 

 year I was quietly staying at Bisham, and now 

 sleeping on the banks of the Satlaj, with a sea 

 of tents around me for miles and miles ! The 

 last few days seem a year, and I can scarcely 

 believe that I have only been four months in India, 

 and only two with my regiment." 



About this time Hodson's anxiety with regard 

 to his mother was greatly relieved by the accounts 

 that reached him of her improving health. "The 



the 21st and 22nd of December. All of us have been complaining 

 more or less, in consequence, it is supposed, of the horrible water we 

 found at Firozshah. If not actually poisoned it was at least satu- 

 rated with gunpowder, and there were animals found in the wells. 

 ... I have been, however, confined to my tent and bed for eight 

 or nine days with violent dysentery and general cold, which has 

 settled down into an obstinate cough. I am terribly pulled down at 

 present, but I trust before we again commence woik I may be fit to 

 take my place." 



