Removed to Assam. 417 



want him for Assam and cannot hear of him any- 

 where.' J So I reported myself, and was directed to 

 proceed to Gowhatty and take charge of the Lower 

 Assam division. I protested at being removed from 

 Burma, and both the chief commissioner and chief 

 engineer also wrote, saying that I was the oldest execu- 

 tive officer in the province, and my services were re- 

 quired to complete the lighthouse on the construction 

 of which I had been so long employed. The reply, 

 to my amazement, was that I had volunteered for 

 service in that remote country, and I wrote back 

 indignantly denying having done so, and requesting 

 permission to return to my legitimate work. But I 

 was told I was wanted more in Assam, than on the 

 lighthouse, which required very little doing to com- 

 plete it, and reminding me that ten years before, 

 during a temporary visit to Calcutta, I had said to 

 Sir K. S., the secretary to Government in the D. P. W., 

 " If ever you want an officer for Assam, remember 

 me." Applicants for service there must have been 

 very few and far between for a memo, of my wishes 

 to be made and entered in the books of that depart- 

 ment, and made use of long after I had forgotten the 

 event. I must own, fond of sport as I am and was, 

 I regretted leaving Burma, where I had spent the 

 best years of my life. Game I knew was abundant 

 in the province I had been transferred to, but the 

 people and country were new and unknown; the 

 language was also quite new, being a mixture of 

 Bengali and Assamese. Everything I possessed 

 guns, rifles, servants were all in Kangoon, and 

 when I reached Gowhatty there was not a house to 

 go into, and I should have fared badly had not the 



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