The circumstances were not, however, always favourable. They were sometimes the reverse. The new horse was unmanageable, the bullocks were weak and could not draw the carts, the servants were remiss or incapable, the roads were in some places shockingly bad, we were left for hours without tent and food, and, as I have said, the weather now and then was wet and stormy. We had sometimes an amount of trouble which made us half regret we had left home. Ladies are generally very patient in such circumstances, but children are sorely tried. The difficulties we encountered in some of our early journeys were such that we now wonder how we got out of them, and succeeded in getting on at all. The touring in favourable circumstances, which I have described, is not however a mere ideal. Happily it was often with us a reality. On setting out things required to be adjusted. Time was required for getting things into their places, and for each person learning to do the work assigned him. When once we got into travelling trim, and our people were what they ought to be, things went on with the regularity of clockwork.
I have mentioned our long tours in 1842 and 1847. On these journeys we had a good deal of pleasant smooth travelling, and we also encountered some of the difficulties of which I have spoken. The Trunk Road from Allahabad to the North-West was in excellent condition in 1842-43; but from Benares to Allahabad it had been allowed to get out of repair, and the roads diverging from the Trunk Road on one side to Futtygurh and on the other side to Agra we found very bad. The story of our difficulties is well remembered by us, but it must be given very concisely. At one place a wheel of our conveyance broke in the middle of a stage, and after some delay we succeeded in getting an Ekka, a small native conveyance drawn by a pony, on the narrow platform of which the members of our party who could not walk were squatted as they best could; while the rest of us walked. We sent on word of our trouble to our missionary friends at Futtygurh, who kindly arranged to get us on to their hospitable abode, and to get our conveyance repaired. Three days after leaving Futtygurh our best horse died, from sheer fatigue in drawing our conveyance through the sand. This threw us on having it drawn by bullocks at the rate of a mile and a half, or at the utmost two miles, an hour, over a very bad road, which jolted us frightfully.