124 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



was " curiously marked," he writes, " by the 

 announcement that the net balance of receipts over 

 expenditure for the past year for the newly acquired 

 provinces has reached upwards of a million sterling. 

 Lord Dalhousie's star is in the ascendant. His 

 financial measures are apparently all good when 

 tried by the only standard admissible in the nine- 

 teenth century — their success." 



His arrival at Kussowlie towards the end of 

 March wonderfully refreshed him both in body and 

 mind. " Talk of Indian luxuries ! there are but 

 two — cold water and cool air ! I get on very com- 

 fortal3ly with my new ' chief.' He is a first-rate 

 man, and has a most uncommon appetite for work, 

 of which there is plenty for both of us. We cover 

 a good stretch of country — comprising five British 

 districts and nine sovereign states ; and as the 

 whole has been in grievous disorder for many years, 

 and a peculiarly difficult population to deal with, 

 you may imagine that the work is not slight. . . . 

 I was at work a whole day lately over one case, 

 which, after all, involved only a claim to about a 

 quarter of an acre of land ! You will give me credit 

 for ingenuity in discovering that the result of some 

 half-dozen quires of written evidence was to prove 

 that neither of the contending parties had any right 

 at all ! " 



Hodson had been staying for a time with Captain 

 Douglas of the 60th Eifles. "There is not a better 

 man or more genuine soldier going. This may 

 appear faint praise, but rightly understood, and 

 conscientiously and boldly worked out, I doubt 

 whether any other profession calls forth the higher 

 qualities of our nature more strongly than does that 



