The strictest discipline had to be maintained, or this moving colony would have been a serious calamity to the peasantry, for the followers would have spread themselves over the country like a flight of locusts, and taken anything they could lay their hands on, representing themselves as _Mulk-i-Lord-Sahib-Ke-Naukar_,[3] whom according to immemorial tradition it was death to resist.

The poor, frightened country-people, therefore, hardly ventured to remonstrate at the _mahouts_ walking off with great loads of their sugar-cane, or to object to the compulsory purchase of their farm produce for half its value.

There was a great deal of this kind of raiding at the commencement of the march, and I was constantly having complaints made to me by the villagers; but after I had inflicted on the offenders a few summary and tolerably severe punishments, and made the peasants to understand it was not the _Mulk-i-Lord-Sahib's_ wish that they should submit to such treatment from his servants, order was established, and I had very rarely any trouble.
Our first halt was at Lucknow.

Sir Hope Grant was commanding the division, and had established himself very comfortably in the Dilkusha.

He had written asking me to bring my wife straight there and stay with him during the Viceroy's visit, as it was still very hot in tents during the day.