200 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



eighty miles, besides heaps of business. I am tired, 

 I confess, for the heat is awful. The treasuries are 

 empty, and no drafts are to be cashed, so how we 

 are to get money I cannot imagine. I ought to 

 have Rs. 1000 a-month as commandant, and we 

 ought to save half towards paying our debts." 



On the 30th Hodson had reached Sumalka in 

 company with the 9th Lancers, Money's troop of 

 Horse Artillery, and the 1st Fusiliers. " This 

 regiment," he writes, "is a credit to any army, 

 and the fellows are in as high spirits and heart, and 

 as plucky and free from croaking, as possible, and 

 really do good to the whole force." 



On the last day of May the troops above men- 

 tioned were encamped at Larsauli, one march nearer 

 Delhi. Here Brigadier Halifax became so ill that 

 Hodson had to place him in his own sliigram (a 

 travelling cart) and see him off towards Umbala. 

 A few hours later he was lying dead at Karnal. 

 His death seemed to Hodson onl}^ the prelude to 

 many more incidents of a like nature. "Before 

 this business ends, we who are, thank God, still 

 young and strong shall alone be left in camp. All 

 the elderly gentlemen will sink under the fatigue 

 and exposure." 



Even in those early days of the great sepoy 

 Mutiny the name of Barnard's chief Intelligence 

 officer was already becoming a tower of strength to 

 our anxious countrymen in Upper India. " Would 

 that we had more like him, and some others I 

 could name," says a correspondent of the ' Lahore 

 Chronicle' for June 1, 1857. "Men who can be 

 in the saddle fifteen hours out of the twenty-four 

 at this time of the year form a glorious contrast 



