My hair and beard are of the most brilliant auburn, so bright as scarcely to be distinguished at a distance from scarlet.

My eyes are bright blue, overshadowed by bushy eyebrows of the color of my hair, and a terrific gash of the deepest purple, which goes over the forehead, the eyelid, and the cheek, and finishes at the ear, gives my face a more strictly military appearance than can be conceived.

When I have been drinking (as is pretty often the case) this gash becomes ruby bright, and as I have another which took off a piece of my under-lip, and shows five of my front teeth, I leave you to imagine that 'seldom lighted on the earth' (as the monster Burke remarked of one of his unhappy victims), 'a more extraordinary vision.' I improved these natural advantages; and, while in cantonment during the hot winds at Chittybobbary, allowed my hair to grow very long, as did my beard, which reached to my waist.

It took me two hours daily to curl my hair in ten thousand little cork-screw ringlets, which waved over my shoulders, and to get my moustaches well round to the corners of my eyelids.

I dressed in loose scarlet trousers and red morocco boots, a scarlet jacket, and a shawl of the same color round my waist; a scarlet turban three feet high, and decorated with a tuft of the scarlet feathers of the flamingo, formed my head-dress, and I did not allow myself a single ornament, except a small silver skull and crossbones in front of my turban.