ABSTRACT
Having started by railway from Serampore near Calcutta late in the evening, with my Staff, Mr. Buckland and Mr. Hart, I reached Patna, the capital of Behar, the next morning. This was in January 1874; and I could not help looking back on my arrival there as a neophyte in the Service in 1848, twenty-six years previously. The sentiments which I had felt at Lahore, at Nagpore, at Hyderabad, now came back to me. Though I had recently given six of the best years of my life to council in the cabinet, yet I knew that my real métier was rather in the field where I was now to be severely exercised.
