assistance, but the tooth required extracting and I could do nothing for
him. Pitched under a walnut tope--the climate delicious, like a warm
English summer, but it is rather hot in my small tent in the middle of
the day; so I have my Charpoy put outside in the shade and lie there
smoking my pipe and thinking. I have spoken of the beauties and
pleasures of the Solab, but I must not omit mention of its annoyances,
flies and mosquitoes, by day the flies abound and cause much irritation
to any exposed part of the body. I do hate tame flies, flies that though
driven away twenty times elude capture, and will pertinaciously return
to the same spot--say your nose--until one is driven nearly mad with
vexation. At dusk the flies return to roost, and then myriads of
mosquitoes emerge from their hiding places, and make night hideous with
their monotonous hum and blood-thirsty propensities. I do not find
chepatties so bad as I expected, indeed I rather like them, but then my
boy makes them excellently well, using soda in their composition. The
process of manufacture is not pleasant--the flour is made into a paste,
and then flattened and consolidated by being thrown backwards and
forwards from one hand to the other, though one may avoid seeing this,
it is difficult to escape hearing the pit-pat of the soft dough as it
passes rapidly between the Khitmutgars extended, and I fear not always
clean fingers, it is then toasted, brought in hot, and you may eat it
dirt and all. But travellers must not be too particular, and so long as
your food is wholesome, eat and be thankful. But here comes my dinner,
with the chepatties I have just seen prepared, and which sight suggested
the foregoing lines. Chicken for breakfast, chicken for dinner, chicken
yesterday, chicken to-morrow, _toujours_ chicken, sometimes curried,
sometimes roasted, torn asunder and made into soup, stew or cutlets, or
with extended wing forming the elegant spatchcock, it is still chicken;
the greatest and rarest change being that it is occasionally rather
tender. I have had chicken soup and roast fowl for dinner, the chicken