DS 485 DEDICATION. To CAPTAIN JOSEPH ALEXANDER WELLER Of the Corps of BENGAL ENGINEERS. The companion of both my journies to Nainee Tal, the first glimpse of which, I am sure, can never be effaced from our memories. We are both determined travellers in the Himmala, and yet, with the exception of our Nainee Tal trips, not one of our other concerted journies have ever been undertaken. Let us hope, however, that fortune may some time hence be more favourable to our plans. I would have given a great deal to have been the companion of your trip of 1842, into Tartary, as described in No. 50 N. S. of the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, which I have read with great interest. It is rather a coincidence, that I should have been the first European the Lama of Toling ever saw, and you the last he can, in all human probability, ever see. On the 20th of October 1842, I introduced the gentleman to European society, in the valley of the Vishnoo Gunga, at the town of Mana; and on the 2nd of June 1842, you gave him a last glimpse of it, in his own country, at the distance of only a few miles from his own home, which the discomfiture of the Sikh invaders then allowed him to revisit. After all the kindness shewn him while a refugee in our territories, I ob M312938 serve he was enraged at your passage of the barrier, which divides us from Tartary; but that should only be judged of with reference to the extraordinary jealousy of the Chinese government, and not as a trait of individual character. Let us cherish the hope of OUR yet meeting the old gentleman within the sacred precincts of Toling itself, and of teaching him to compound a better mixture for the cure of his nervous irritability about European intercourse, than the Chinese decoction of tea to which he treated you at Lufkhel, beyond the Oonta Dhoora pass into Tartary. In conclusion, permit me to dedicate to you this small work, as a trifling memorial of the friendship and esteem of PILGRIM. INTRODUCTION. The following notes of a journey made in search of health and scenery, were originally given to the late Editor of the Agra Ukhbar (Mr. H. Tandy) as a mark of personal regard on the part of the writer, with the hope that the scenes and adventures described might occasionally afford some amusement to the readers of that journal. Several of the writer's friends having expressed a wish to have them entire, he had intended to have a few copies thrown off for private distribution, and the printing had actually been begun. In the meantime, however, a writer in the" Hills" newspaper, under the name of " Bagman," having contested many of the statements in the notes, and given a false colouring to others, that which the writer deemed of interest only to his private friends was forced by misrepresentation into public notice; and a number of gentlemen having urged the writer to publish his notes by subscription, he has been induced to consent. There are nearly three hundred subscribers to the little work, and the overplus, after payment of expences, is to be handed over to the residents at Nainee Tal to be laid out in improving the approaches to the Lake. Pilgrim trusts that the defects of style may be leniently dealt with. They might easily have been amended, but on his taking the advice of several friends on the subject, an award was given in favour of the "NOTES" appearing as they were first written. He only pretends to describe, without embellishment, scenes and adventures as they appeared at the time to impress themselves on his mind; and by many who are conversant with them, his descriptions have been considered very faithful. First of all, the author's intention was very far from that of publishing his notes; indeed, but |