_September 28th._--Went to Elgin to see the fine old ruin of the Cathedral, which is very grand, and must have been magnificent. It was built in the beginning of the thirteenth century, burnt down, and rebuilt in the fourteenth. I see they have done all I wanted to have done for General Havelock. He has got a good service pension, is made Major-General and K.C.B.
_Dunrobin Castle, October 2nd._--I came here from Gordon Castle on Wednesday, by sea from Burghead to the Little Ferry, a very tiresome way of travelling, the delays being detestable. Have long been most desirous of seeing this place, which has quite equalled my expectations, for it is a most princely possession, and the Castle exceedingly beautiful and moreover very comfortable. I start for London to-morrow morning with a long journey before me.
The Indian news of this week as bad and promises as ill as well can be, and I expect worse each mail that comes. We are justly punished for our ambition and encroaching spirit, but it must be owned we struggle gallantly for what we have perhaps unjustly acquired. Europe behaves well to us, for though we have made ourselves universally odious by our insolence and our domination, and our long habit of bullying all the world, nobody triumphs over us in the hour of our distress, and even Russia, who has no cause to feel anything but ill will towards us, evinces her regret and sympathy in courteous terms. Whatever the result of this contest may be, it will certainly absorb all our efforts and occupy our full strength and power so that we shall not be able to take any active or influential part in European affairs for some time to come. The rest of the Great Powers will have it in their power to settle everything as seems meet to them, without troubling themselves about us and our opinions. For the present we are reduced to the condition of an insignificant Power. It is certain that if this mutiny had taken place two years earlier, we could not have engaged at all in the Russian War.
_London, October 6th._--I left Dunrobin after breakfast on Saturday morning, 3rd inst., and arrived in London on Monday (yesterday) at 11 A.M. My journey was after this wise: We (i.e. Mr. Marshall of the Life Guards, an aide-de-camp of Lord Carlisle's, who travelled from Dunrobin with me) got into the mail at Golspie and took our places to Inverness. At Tain, the first stage, we walked on, leaving the coach to overtake us. After walking three miles, and no coach coming, we got alarmed, and on enquiry of the first man we fell in with, found we had come the wrong way, and that the mail had gone on. We started on our return to Tain, and falling in with a good Samaritan in the shape of a banker in that place, who was driving in the opposite direction, he took us up in his gig, and drove us back to the inn, where we took post, and followed the mail to Inverness, where we arrived an hour after it. There we slept, and at five minutes before five on Sunday morning we were in the mail again, and arrived at Perth at six o'clock, making 117 miles in thirteen hours. In twenty minutes more we were in the mail train, and reached Euston Square safe and sound at eleven o'clock, doing the distance between Perth and London in seventeen and a half hours. I have seen a vast deal of very beautiful scenery of all sorts, but the most beautiful of all (and I never saw anything more lovely anywhere) is the road from Blair Athol to Dunkeld, which includes the pass of Killiecrankie.