health, in the end of 1835 and beginning of 1836. To what I wrote
during that journey I have now added a few notes, observations, and
conversations with natives, on the subjects which my narrative seemed
to embrace; and the whole will, I hope, interest and amuse you and
the other members of our family; and appear, perchance, not
altogether uninteresting or uninstructive to those who are strangers
to us both.

Of one thing I must beg you to be assured, that I have nowhere
indulged in fiction, either in the narrative, the recollections, or
the conversations. What I relate on the testimony of others I believe
to be true; and what I relate upon my own you may rely upon as being
so. Had I chosen to write a work of fiction, I might possibly have
made it a good deal more interesting; but I question whether it would
have been so much valued by you, or so useful to others; and these
are the objects I have had in view. The work may, perhaps, tend to
make the people of India better understood by those of my own
countrymen whose destinies are cast among them, and inspire more
kindly feelings towards them. Those parts which, to the general
reader, will seem dry and tedious, may be considered, by the Indian
statesman, as the most useful and important.

The opportunities of observation, which varied employment has given
me, have been such as fall to the lot of few; but, although I have
endeavoured to make the most of them, the time of public servants is
not their own; and that of few men has been more exclusively devoted
to the service of their masters than mine. It may be, however, that
the world, or that part of it which ventures to read these pages,
will think that it had been better had I not been left even the
little leisure that has been devoted to them.