He had served in the 3rd Light Dragoons and on the staff of his cousin, Lord Gough, during the Sutlej and Punjab campaigns, and was naturally an object of the deepest veneration to all the youngsters on board.
At Madras we stopped to land passengers, and I took this opportunity of going on shore to see some old Addiscombe friends, most of whom were greatly excited at the prospect of a war in Burma.

The transports were then actually lying in the Madras roads, and a few days later this portion of the expedition started for Rangoon.
At last, on the 1st April, we reached Calcutta, and I had to say good-bye to the friends I had made during the six weeks' voyage, most of whom I was never to meet again.
On landing, I received a letter from my father, who commanded the Lahore division, informing me that the proprietor of Spence's Hotel had been instructed to receive me, and that I had better put up there until I reported myself at the Head-Quarters of the Bengal Artillery at Dum-Dum.

This was chilling news, for I was the only one of our party who had to go to a hotel on landing.

The Infantry cadets had either been taken charge of by the Town Major, who provided them with quarters in Fort William, or had gone to stay with friends, and the only other Artilleryman (Stewart) went direct to Dum-Dum, where he had a brother, also a gunner, who, poor follow, was murdered with his young wife five years later by the mutineers at Gwalior.

I was still more depressed later on by finding myself at dinner _tete-a-tete_ with a first-class specimen of the results of an Indian climate.
He belonged to my own regiment, and was going home on medical certificate, but did not look as if he could ever reach England.