fully expatiated on the loneliness of it. In a Bhuttia village a few miles over the hills there was an elderly American lady missionary. Down in the forest below a few English tea-planters were scattered about, the nearest fifteen or twenty miles from us. During the winter we might expect an occasional visitor, a General or our Colonel on inspection duty, or a Public Works Department Official come to see to the state of the road or the repair of the buildings. During the rainy season, which lasts seven months, from April to the end of October, with a rainfall therein from two hundred to three hundred inches, we would see no stranger and probably be cut off from outside intercourse by the washing away of the roads. As during those months the forest below would be filled with the deadly Terai fever, we could not solace our loneliness by sport which rendered the remainder of the year bearable. And as the jungle around us, which grew to our very doors would, during the Rains, swarm with leeches which fasten in scores on man or beast if given the chance, we would scarcely be able to put foot outside our bungalows, even if tempted to face the awful thunderstorms and torrential Rains.

All this certainly did not sound cheering; so I changed the subject and asked for information regarding my duties in the Station. I learned that, in addition to my work of my detachment, I would hold the proud but unpaid post of Officer Commanding Buxa Duar—an appointment which would entail voluminous routine correspondence on me. I would also, again without extra pay, represent law and order by being Cantonment Magistrate, third class, with power to award imprisonment up to three months' hard labour. Verily, the duties that fall to the lot of the Indian Army Officer are many and various. Besides being a soldier he is also a schoolmaster, having to set and correct examination papers for certificates of education. He must be something of a master tailor to decide on the fit and alteration of his men's new uniforms; a clerk to cope with interminable correspondence; an accountant to wrestle with complicated accounts. He must be an architect and builder to direct and oversee the erection and repair of the barracks, which is done by the sepoys themselves. Bad for him if he is not a good business man, for he must often give out contracts for hundreds or thousands of pounds, and see that they are properly carried out. A lawyer, to sit on or preside at courts martial, or to administer the law to civilians as Cantonment Magistrate. And sometimes it falls to his lot to replace the chaplain in a military Station, read the lessons in church, or, perhaps, the Burial Service over the grave of a comrade.

Next morning the detachment of Punjabis marched off; and as we watched their files disappear down the winding mountain road, we three Britishers certainly felt a little isolated and cut off from our kind. Before the small column passed the last bend which would hide them from our eyes, the major turned to wave us a cheery farewell. Poor fellow, not long after, when in command of his regiment, he died of cholera in Benares.

However, our depression was momentary; and we turned away to begin making ourselves acquainted with our new surroundings. Buxa Duar stands guard over one of the gates of India, which opens into it from the little-known country of Bhutan. It commands a pass through the Himalayas into the fertile plains of Eastern Bengal, a pass that has run with blood many a time in the past. Through it fierce raiders have poured to the laying waste of the rich plains below. Back through it weeping women and weary children have passed to slavery in a savage land. And were the strong hand of Briton lifted from it, its jungle-clad hills would see again the blood-dyed columns of fighting men and the sad processions of wailing captives. To-day its gloomy depths are peaceful. But to-morrow, when the menace of a regenerated and aggressive China becomes real, its rocky walls may once more echo to the sounds of war.

Three thousand feet above our heads, two miles away in a straight line, but six by the winding mule track, lay the boundary-line between the Indian Empire and Bhutana—a line that runs along the mountain tops and rarely fringes the plains. It curves round the northern slopes of the conical hill that towers above Buxa, Sinchula, the "Hill of the Misty Pass."

Buxa Duar has been the scene of fierce fighting even in the short history of England's rule in India. It was first taken by the British from the Bhutanese in the days of Warren Hastings, when in 1772 Captain Jones and his small column of sepoys swept them back into their mountainous land. It was given back the following year. In 1864 we again went to war with Bhutan and captured Buxa; and, although throughout the winter of that year, our troops were closely besieged in it, it has remained in our possession ever since. Formerly garrisoned by a whole regiment, it is now occupied merely by a double company—two hundred men—of an Indian Infantry battalion. They are the only troops between the Bhutan border and Calcutta—three hundred miles away.

In all my wanderings I have seldom seen a lovelier spot than this lonely outpost. Nestling in the little hollow on the giant Himalayas, its few bungalows stood in gardens flaming with the brilliant colours of bougainvillias and poinsettias, surrounded by hedges of wild roses, and shaded by clusters of tall bamboos and the dense foliage of mango trees. The encircling arms of the mountains held it closely pressed. The jungle clothed the steep slopes around it, and rioted to our very doors. No sound disturbed its peace, save the shrill notes of our bugles or the chattering of monkeys by day, and the sudden harsh cry of barking deer or the monotonous bell-like note of the night-jar after the sun had set.

The building dignified by the name of fort was in reality an irregular square of one-storied stone barracks, their outer faces and iron-shuttered windows loopholed for rifle fire. They were connected by a low stone wall pierced with three gateways, closed at night or on an alarm by iron gates, which slid into place on wheels. The fort was built on a knoll, which on three sides fell perpendicularly for two or three hundred feet in rocky precipices from ten to forty yards from the walls. On the north face it was only about fifty feet above the parade ground, which was a levelled space two hundred yards long and a hundred broad. This served also for hockey and as a rifle-range; the targets being placed in tiers up the steep hill-side on the east end.

Standing at the front gate and looking northwards towards the mountains, one saw the ground rise sharply to the foot of Sinchula. Dotted about among the trees and set round with orchid-studded, low stone walls or flowering hedges, were four or five single-storied bungalows.

The lowest and nearest to the parade ground of these was the Commanding Officer's Quarters, which I occupied. Higher up to the right, and separated from mine by a deep ravine crossed by a little wooden bridge, was an empty house, known as Married Officers' Quarters. Behind it was a long wooden building raised on pillars, the forest officer's bungalow, to shelter that official in his annual visit. Around it were a few bamboo huts for his native clerks. Past my quarters ran the mountain road which climbed the steep sides of Sinchula, and, degenerating into a narrow mule track, wound round it to the Bhutan frontier. Near my house it was shaded by mango trees which, when the fruit was ripe, were very popular with the wild monkeys. To preserve the mangoes for ourselves, I was then obliged to station a sentry on the road at daybreak to keep the marauders off. In my garden stood a very large mango tree, up which