Oldeb- to whom I became much attached at Calcutta, during the
administration of Warren Hastings. I was then only twenty years old.
When I first saw you, Mr. Bedloe, at Saratoga, it was the miraculous
similarity which existed between yourself and the painting which
induced me to accost you, to seek your friendship, and to bring
about those arrangements which resulted in my becoming your constant
companion. In accomplishing this point, I was urged partly, and
perhaps principally, by a regretful memory of the deceased, but
also, in part, by an uneasy, and not altogether horrorless curiosity
respecting yourself.
"In your detail of the vision which presented itself to you amid the
hills, you have described, with the minutest accuracy, the Indian city
of Benares, upon the Holy River. The riots, the combat, the
massacre, were the actual events of the insurrection of Cheyte Sing,
which took place in 1780, when Hastings was put in imminent peril of
his life. The man escaping by the string of turbans was Cheyte Sing
himself. The party in the kiosk were sepoys and British officers,
headed by Hastings. Of this party I was one, and did all I could to
prevent the rash and fatal sally of the officer who fell, in the
crowded alleys, by the poisoned arrow of a Bengalee.
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