is it only for the sake of the renewed health which both yourself and your family would inhale from the cool breezes of the Ganges and the fine frosty mornings which I am now enjoying. But there seems so great an advantage in producing occasionally to this people, in a visible and popular shape, the power and person by whom they are held in subjection; so many valuable objects might be attained by an intercourse and acquaintance between the chief governor, his agents, and his subjects, and from the other opportunities of acquiring knowledge and doing good, of which no man is likely to make a better use than your Lordship, that I most fervently wish you a speedy triumph over the Burmans, if it were only for the chance that your Lordship may thus be enabled to ascend the Ganges, and inspect some of the most important and interesting parts of Northern India."

"The

The Bishop had large congregations, both at the cantonments and Residency, on two successive Sundays. Hindostani reads well in prayer, particularly those words. which are derived from the Arabic," he wrote. "I like the sound of

"Aram Ullahi jo sare fahemon se bahur hue'—' the peace of God, etc.; and of Khoda Khader, Mutluk, jo Bap our Beta our Ruk Kodus hue'-'God victorious, Mighty, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! I had also twelve candidates for confirmation, and administered the Sacrament to twenty-five persons, and found the people extremely anxious to assemble for public worship. The first Sunday I preached, indeed, three times, and twice the second, besides giving two confirmation lectures on the Friday and Saturday, and some other occasional duty. Mr. Ricketts is himself in the habit of acting as chaplain at the Residency every Sunday; but the people in the king's employ, and the other Christian inhabitants, complain that Government are very jealous of their attending at that place, and they express great anxiety to establish a similar meeting for devotional purposes among themselves."

After ten days of varied duty and court experiences, described in his Journal in a pleasant chapter, he fell sick on the first stage from that capital to Bareilly, and found himself alone without physician or friend. He was seized by an aggravated form of the influenza epidemic, which prevailed all over Northern India that year. At Sandi, in the present district

of Hardoi, he offered up this prayer of thanksgiving for recovery :

"I thank Thee, O Lord, that Thou hast heard my prayer and helped me in the needful time of trouble; that Thou hast delivered me from sharp sickness and great apparent danger, when I had no skill to heal myself, and when no human skill was near to save me. I thank Thee for the support which Thou gavest me in my hour of trial; that Thou didst not let my sins to triumph over me, neither mine iniquities to sink me in despair. I thank Thee for the many comforts with which Thy mercy surrounded me; for the accommodations of wealth, the security of guards, the attendance and fidelity of servants, the advantage of medicine and natural means of cure, the unclouded use of my reason, and the holy and prevailing prayers which my absent friends offered up for me! But above all I thank Thee for the knowledge of my own weakness, and of Thy great goodness and power, beseeching Thee that the recollection of these days may not vanish like a morning dream, but that the resolutions which I have formed may be sealed with Thy grace, and the life which Thou hast spared may be spent hereafter in Thy service; that my past sins may be forgiven and forsaken, and my future days may be employed in serving and pleasing Thee, through Thy dear Son Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen."

A fortnight later he wrote of the Dravidian Mission to Principal Mill:

"I feel greatly obliged and gratified by your prompt acquiescence in, and execution of, my views with regard to the Paharee tribes, and I pray God that we may be blessed by seeing such a primitive establishment as you speak of among them. My main anxiety, in the first instance, was to get the start of our competitors, and fix an Episcopal clergyman in immediate connection with, and dependence on, Bishop's College, in a spot, the cultivation of which may eventually place that College at the head of a connected chain of missions as extensive, and in a purer faith, than the Jesuit Reductions' of Paraguay.”

He had wider views than even these, as every Christian soul loyal to the King must have. At Bareilly, where his host, Mr. Hawkins, the judge, gave him the ripe experience of fortytwo years' continuous service, he determined to visit the hill

station of Almora, the Christians of which had never seen a clergyman there. "I was very anxious not only to give a Sunday to its secluded flock, but to ascertain what facilities existed. . . for eventually spreading the Gospel among these mountaineers, and beyond them into Tibet and Tartary. . . . If God spare me life and opportunities, I yet hope to see Christianity revived, through this channel, in countries where, under a corrupted form indeed, it is said to have once flourished widely through the labours of the Nestorians." Here again Heber only anticipated by a generation or two what has been accomplished. All he dreamed of for the elevation of the people, if not in the entrance of Christianity into Central Asia by this route, was accomplished by the late Commissioner, Sir Henry Ramsay, K.C.B., "the king of Kumaon," a man after his own heart, and by the London and the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Societies.

Contemplating such a journey in those days through the most unprotected part of Rohilcund, Delhi, Rajpootana, and the Bheel country to Baroda and Bombay, Reginald Heber wrote this solemn and loving communication, to be given “to my dear wife, in case of my death."

"SHAHEE, ROHILCUND, 18th November 1824.

"As I am engaged in a journey in which there is, I find, a probability of more and greater dangers than I anticipated, I write these few lines to my dear wife, to assure her that, next to the welfare of my immortal soul (which I commit, in humble hope, to the undeserved mercies of my God and Lord Jesus Christ), the thought of her and of my beloved children is, at this moment, nearest my heart, and my most earnest prayers are offered for her and their happiness and holiness, here and hereafter. Should I meet my death in the course of the present journey, it is my request to her to be comforted concerning me, and to bear my loss patiently, and to trust in the Almighty to raise up friends, and give food and clothing to herself and her children. It is also my request that she would transmit my affectionate love and the assurance of my prayers to my dear mother and to my father-inlaw, to Mrs. Yonge, my uncle and aunt Allanson, my beloved brother and sister, and all with whom I am connected by blood or marriage, particularly Harriet Douglas and Charlotte Shipley. I beg her to transmit the same assurance of my continued affec

tion and prayers to my dear friend Charlotte Dod, also to my dear friends Thornton, C. Williams Wynn, Wilmot, and Davenport.

"I am not aware of any advantageous alteration which I could make in the will which I left at Calcutta, and I am too poor to leave legacies. I will, therefore, only send my blessing to my dear wife and children, and to the valuable relations and friends whom I have enumerated, begging them to fear and love God above all things, and so to endeavour to serve Him, as that, through the worthiness and compassion of His Son, in whom only I trust, we may meet in a happy eternity. Amen! Amen! May God hear my prayers for myself and them, for the sake of our blessed Saviour! REGINALD CALCUTTA."

CHAPTER X

ALMORA TO BOMBAY

1824-1825

Two months before the crowning victory of Waterloo, the Goorkha war closed with the cession of the fort of Almora and the provinces of Kumaon and Garhwal. A hill country of the size of Switzerland, but even more beautiful, and a million of trusty highlanders were added to the British Empire. Farther west, in the lower range of the Himalayas, part of Simla also was annexed. From Nipal on the east to Kashmir on the north-west, a line of cool hill country had thus been opened up to European settlement and for sanitary retreat just before Bishop Heber's arrival in the country. Lieutenant Kennedy built the first permanent house in Simla in 1819, and ten years afterwards Lord Amherst spent the hot season there, the first of the series of Governor-Generals and Viceroys who have gradually made it the summer capital of British India. Almora, however, which has since become the centre of such civil and military sanitaria for the North-Western Provinces as Naini-Tal, Ranikhet and Chowbuttia, Mussooree and Landhaur, seemed likely to outstrip Simla at the first. Mr. Adam, the very able and very conservative Member of Council, who acted as Governor-General before Lord Amherst's arrival, had a house at Almora, which he placed at the service of the Bishop.

There Heber found himself, after the toils and the exposure of the plains, during seven months of the hot and rainy seasons of 1824, in the shadow of thirty snowy peaks, all much loftier than Mont Blanc, and three of them rising to twenty-six thousand