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Leaving this kind and hospitable family, we rode on to the plantation of Mr. Bell, who had the "engagement" to shoot the tiger. He is a brave Scot, very fond of sport, and had a room full of stuffed birds, which he was going to send off to Australia. Occasionally he had a shot at other game. Once he had brought down a leopard, and, as he said, thought the beast was "deed," and went up to him, when the brute gave a spring, and tore open his leg, which laid him up for two months. But such beasts are really less dangerous than the cobras, which crawl among the rows of plants, and as the field-hands go among them barefoot, some fall victims every year. But an Englishman is protected by his boots, and Mr. Bell strolls about with his dog and his gun, without the slightest sense of danger.

We had now accomplished our visit to the Himalayas, and were to bid adieu to the mountains and the valleys. But how were we to get back to Saharanpur? There was the mail-wagon and the omnibuckus. But these seemed very prosaic after our mountain raptures. Mr. Herron suggested that we should try dooleys– long palanquins in which we could lie down and sleep (perhaps), and thus be carried over the mountains at night. As we were eager for new experiences, of course we were ready for any novelty. But great bodies move slowly, and how great we were we began to realize when we found what a force it took to move us. Mr. Herron sent for the chaudri– a kind of public carrier whose office it is to provide for such services – and an engagement was formally entered into between the high contracting parties that for a certain sum he was to provide two dooleys and a sufficient number of bearers, to carry us over the mountains to Saharanpur, a distance of forty-two miles. This was duly signed and sealed, and the money paid on the spot, with promise of liberal backsheesh at the end if the agreement was satisfactorily performed.

Thus authorized and empowered to enter into negotiations with inferior parties, the chaudri sent forward a courier, or sarbarah, to go ahead over the whole route a day in advance, and to secure the relays, and thus prepare for our royal progress.

This seemed very magnificent, but when our retinue filed into the yard on the evening of our departure, and drew up before the veranda, we were almost ashamed to see what a prodigious ado it took to get us two poor mortals out of the valley. Our escort was as follows: Each dooley had six bearers, or kahars– four to carry it, and two to be ready as a reserve. Besides these twelve, there were two bahangi-wallas to carry our one trunk on a bamboo pole, making fourteen persons in all. As there were five stages (for one set of men could only go about eight miles), it took seventy men (besides the two high officials) to carry our sacred persons these forty-two miles! Of the reserve of four who walked beside us, two performed the function of torch-bearers – no unimportant matter when traversing a forest so full of wild beasts that the natives cannot be induced to cross it at night without lights kept burning.

The torch was made simply by winding a piece of cloth around the end of a stick, and pouring oil upon it from a bottle carried for the purpose (just the mode of the wise virgins in the parable). Our kind friends had put a mattress in each dooley, with pillows and coverlet, so that if we could not quite go to bed, we could make ourselves comfortable for a night's journey. I took off my boots, and wrapping my feet in the soft fur of the skin of the Himalayan goat, which I had purchased in the mountains, stretched myself

 
Like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him,
 

and bade the cavalcade take up its march. They lighted their torches, and like the wise virgins, "took oil in their vessels with their lamps," and set out on our night journey. At first we wound our way through the streets of the town, through bazaars and past temples, till at last we emerged from all signs of human habitation, and were alone with the forests and the stars.

When we were fairly in the woods, all the stories I had heard of wild beasts came back to me. For a week past I had been listening to thrilling incidents, many of which occurred in this very mountain pass. The Sewalic range is entirely uninhabited except along the roads, and is thus given up to wild beasts, and nowhere is one more likely to meet an adventure. That very morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Woodside had given me her experience. She was once crossing this pass at night, and as it came near the break of day she saw men running, and heard the cry of "tiger," but thought little of it, as the natives were apt to give false alarms; but presently the horses began to rear and plunge, so that the driver loosed them and let them go, and just then she heard a tremendous roar, which seemed close to the wagon, where a couple of the brutes had come down to drink of a brook by the roadside. She was so terrified that she did not dare to look out, but shut at once the windows of the gharri. Presently some soldiers came up the pass with elephants, who went in pursuit, but the monsters had retreated into the forest.

That was some years ago, but such incidents may still happen. Only a few weeks since Mr. Woodside was riding through the pass at night in the mail-wagon, and had dropped asleep, when his companion, a British officer, awoke him, telling him he had just seen a couple of tigers distinctly in the moonlight.

One would suppose we were safe enough with more than a dozen attendants, but the natives are very timid, and a tiger's roar will set them flying. A lady at Dehra, the daughter of a missionary, told us how she was once carried with her mother and one or two other children in dooleys, when just at break of day a huge tiger walked out of a wood, and came right towards them, when the brave coolies at once dropped them and ran, leaving the mother and her children to their fate. Fortunately she had presence of mind to light a piece of matting, and throw it out to the brute, who either from that, or perhaps because he was too noble a beast to attack a woman, after eyeing them for some moments, deliberately walked away.

Such associations with the road we were travelling, gave an excitement to our night journey which was not the most composing to sleep. It is very well to sit by the fireside and talk about tigers, but I do not know of anybody who would care to meet one in the woods, unless well armed and on an elephant's back.

But what if a wild elephant should come out upon us? In general, I believe these are quiet and peaceable beasts, but they are subject to a kind of madness which makes them untamable. A "rogue elephant" – one who has been tamed, and afterwards goes back to his savage state – is one of the most dangerous of wild beasts. When the Prince of Wales was hunting in the Terai with Sir Jung Bahadoor, an alarm was given that a rogue elephant was coming, and they pushed the Prince up into a tree as quickly as possible, for the monster has no respect to majesty. Mrs. Woodside told me that they once had a servant who asked to go home to visit his friends. On his way he lay down at the foot of a tree, and fell asleep, when a rogue elephant came along, and took him up like a kitten, and crushed him in an instant, and threw him on the roadside.

The possibility of such an adventure was quite enough to keep our imagination in lively exercise. Our friends had told us that there was no danger with flaming torches, although we might perhaps hear a distant roar on the mountains, or an elephant breaking through the trees. We listened intently. When the men were moving on in silence, we strained our ears to catch any sound that might break the stillness of the forest. If a branch fell from a tree, it might be an elephant coming through the wood. If we could not see, we imagined forms gliding in the darkness. Even the shadows cast by the starlight took the shapes that we dreaded. Hush! there is a stealthy step over the fallen leaves. No, it is the wind whispering in the trees. Thus was it all night long. If any wild beasts glared on us out of the covert, our flaming torches kept them at a respectful distance. We did not hear the tramp of an elephant, the growl of a tiger, or even the cry of a jackal.

But though we had not the excitement of an adventure, the scene itself was wild and weird enough. We were entirely alone, with more than a dozen men, with not one of whom we could exchange a single word, traversing a mountain pass, with miles of forest and jungle separating us from any habitation. Our attendants were men of powerful physique, whose swarthy limbs and strange faces looked more strange than ever by the torchlight. Once in seven or eight miles they set down their burden. We halted at a camp fire by the roadside, where a fresh relay was waiting. There our fourteen men were swelled to twenty-eight. Then the curtain of my couch was gently drawn aside, a black head was thrust in, and a voice whispered in the softest of tones "Sahib, backsheesh!" Then the new bearers took up their load, and jogged on their way.

I must say they did very well. The motion was not unpleasant. The dooley rested not on two poles, but on one long bamboo, three or four inches in diameter, at each end of which two men braced themselves against each other, and moved forward with a swinging gait, a kind of dog trot, which they accompanied with a low grunt, which seemed to relieve them, and be a way of keeping time. Their burdens did not fatigue them much – at least they did not groan under the load, but talked and laughed by the way. Nor were luxuries forgotten. One of the men carried a hooka, which served for the whole party, being passed from mouth to mouth, with which the men, when off duty, refreshed themselves with many a puff of the fragrant weed.

Thus refreshed they kept up a steady gait of about three miles an hour through the night. At length the day began to break. As we approached the end of our journey the men picked up speed, and I thought they would come in on a run. Glad were we to come in sight of Saharanpur. At ten o'clock we entered the Mission Compound, and drew up before the door of "Calderwood Padre," who, as he saw me stretched out at full length, "like a warrior taking his rest," if not "with his martial cloak around him," yet with his Scotch plaid shawl covering "his manly breast," declared that I was "an old Indian!"

CHAPTER XVI

THE TRAGEDY OF CAWNPORE

The interest of India is not wholly in the far historic past. Within our own times it has been the theatre of stirring events. In coming down from Upper India, we passed over the "dark and bloody ground" of the Mutiny – one of the most terrible struggles of modern times – a struggle unrelieved by any of the amenities of civilized warfare. On the banks of the Ganges stands a dull old city, of which Bayard Taylor once wrote: "Cawnpore is a pleasant spot, though it contains nothing whatever to interest the traveller." That was true when he saw it, twenty-four years ago. It was then a "sleepy" place. Everything had a quiet and peaceful look. The river flowed peacefully along, and the pretty bungalows of the English residents on its banks seemed like so many castles of indolence, as they stood enclosed in spacious grounds, under the shade of trees, whose leaves scarcely stirred in the sultry air. But four years after that American traveller had passed, that peaceful river ran with Christian blood, and that old Indian town witnessed scenes of cruelty worse than that of the Black Hole of Calcutta, committed by a monster more inhuman than Surajah Dowlah. The memory of those scenes now gives a melancholy interest to the place, such as belongs to no other in India.

It was midnight when we reached Cawnpore (we had left Saharanpur in the morning), and we were utter strangers; but as we stepped from the railway carriage, a stalwart American (Rev. Mr. Mansell of the Methodist Mission) came up, and calling us by name, took us to his home, and "kindly entreated us," and the next morning rode about the city with us to show the sadly memorable places.

The outbreak of the Mutiny in India in 1857, took its English rulers by surprise. They had held the country for a hundred years, and thought they could hold it forever. So secure did they feel that they had reduced their army to a minimum. In the Russian war, regiment after regiment was called home to serve in the Crimea, till there were left not more than twenty thousand British troops in all India – an insignificant force to hold such a vast dependency; and weakened still more by being scattered in small bodies over the country, with no means of rapid concentration. There was hardly a railroad in India. All movements of troops had to be made by long marches. Thus detached and helpless, the military power was really in the hands of the Sepoys, who garrisoned the towns, and whom the English had trained to be good soldiers, with no suspicion that their skill and discipline would ever be turned against themselves.

This was the opportunity for smothered discontent to break out into open rebellion. There had long been among the people an uneasy and restless feeling, such as is the precursor of revolution – a ground swell, which sometimes comes before as well as after a storm. It was just a hundred years since the battle of Plassey (fought June, 1757), which decided the fate of India, and it was whispered that when the century was complete, the English yoke should be broken, and India should be free. The Crimean war had aroused a spirit of fanaticism among the Mohammedans, which extended across the whole of Asia, and fierce Moslems believed that if the English were but driven out, there might be a reconstruction of the splendid old Mogul Empire. This was, therefore, a critical moment, in which the defenceless state of India offered a temptation to rebellion. Some there were (like the Lawrences – Sir John in the Punjaub, and Sir Henry in Lucknow) whose eyes were opened to the danger, and who warned the government. But it could not believe a rebellion was possible; so that when the storm burst, it was like a peal of thunder from a clear sky.

Thus taken by surprise, and off their guard, the English were at a great disadvantage. But they quickly recovered themselves, and prepared for a desperate defence. In towns where the garrisons were chiefly of native troops, with only a small nucleus of English officers and soldiers, the latter had no hope of safety, but to rally all on whom they could rely, and retreat into the forts, and hold out to the last. Such a quick movement saved Agra, where Sir William Muir told me, he and hundreds of refugees with him, passed the whole time of the mutiny, shut up in the fort. The same promptness saved Allahabad. But in Delhi, where the rising took place a few days before, the alarm was not taken quickly enough; the Sepoys rushed in, shooting down their officers, and made themselves masters of the fort and the city, which was not retaken till months after, at the close of a long and terrible siege.

At Cawnpore there was no fort. Sir Hugh Wheeler, who was in command, had three or four thousand troops, but not one man in ten was an English soldier. The rest were Sepoys, who caught the fever of disaffection, and marched off with horses and guns. Mustering the little remnant of his force, he threw up intrenchments on the parade-ground, into which he gathered some two hundred and fifty men of different regiments. Adding to these "civilians" and native servants, and the sick in the hospital, there were about 300 more, with 330 women and children. The latter, of course, added nothing to the strength of the garrison, but were a constant subject of care and anxiety. But with this little force he defended himself bravely for several weeks, beating off every attack of the enemy. But he was in no condition to sustain a siege; his force was becoming rapidly reduced, while foes were swarming around him. In this extremity, uncertain when an English army could come to his relief, he received a proposal to surrender, with the promise that all – men, women, and children – should be allowed to depart in safety, and be provided with boats to take them down the Ganges to Allahabad. He did not listen to these smooth promises without inward misgivings. He was suspicious of treachery; but the case was desperate, and Nana Sahib, who up to the time of the Mutiny had protested great friendship for the English, took a solemn oath that they should be protected. Thus tempted, they yielded to the fatal surrender.

The next morning, June 27th, those who were left of the little garrison marched out of their intrenchments, and were escorted by the Sepoy army on their way to the boats. The women and children and wounded were mounted on elephants, and thus conveyed down to the river. With eagerness they embarked on the boats that were to carry them to a place of safety, and pushed off into the stream. At that moment a native officer who stood on the bank raised his sword, and a masked battery opened on the boats with grape-shot. Instantly ensued a scene of despair. Some of the boats sunk, others took fire, and men, women, and children, were struggling in the water. The Mahratta horsemen pushed into the stream, and cut down the men who tried to save themselves (only four strong swimmers escaped), while the women and children were spared to a worse fate. All the men who were brought back to the shore were massacred on the spot, in the presence of this human tiger, who feasted his eyes with their blood; and about two hundred women and children were taken back into the town as prisoners, in deeper wretchedness than before. They were kept in close confinement nearly three weeks in dreadful uncertainty of their fate, till the middle of July, when Havelock was approaching by forced marches; and fearful that his prey should escape, Nana Sahib gave orders that they should be put to death. No element of horror was wanting in that fearful tragedy. Says one who saw the bodies the next day, and whose wife and children were among those who perished:

"The poor ladies were ordered to come out, but neither threats nor persuasions could induce them to do so. They laid hold of each other by dozens, and clung so close that it was impossible to separate them, or drag them out of the building. The troopers therefore brought muskets, and after firing a great many shots from the doors and windows, rushed in with swords and bayonets. [One account says that, as Hindoos shrink from the touch of blood, five Mohammedan butchers were sent in to complete the work.] Some of the helpless creatures, in their agony, fell down at the feet of their murderers, clasped their legs, and begged in the most pitiful manner to spare their lives, but to no purpose. The fearful deed was done most deliberately, and in the midst of the most dreadful shrieks and cries of the victims. From a little before sunset till candlelight was occupied in completing the dreadful deed. The doors of the building were then locked up for the night, and the murderers went to their homes. Next morning it was found, on opening the doors, that some ten or fifteen women, with a few of the children, had managed to escape from death by falling and hiding under the murdered bodies of their fellow-prisoners. A fresh order was therefore sent to murder them also; but the survivors, not being able to bear the idea of being cut down, rushed out into the compound, and seeing a well, threw themselves into it without hesitation, thus putting a period to lives which it was impossible for them to save. The dead bodies of those murdered on the preceding evening were then ordered to be thrown into the same well, and 'jullars' were employed to drag them along like dogs."⁶

The next day after the massacre, Havelock entered the city, and officers and men rushed to the prison house, hoping to be in time to save that unhappy company of English women and children. But what horrors met their sight! Not one living remained. The place showed traces of the late butchery. The floors were covered with blood. "Upon the walls and pillars were the marks of bullets, and of cuts made by sword-strokes, not high up as if men had fought with men, but low down, and about the corners, where the poor crouching victims had been cut to pieces." "Locks of long silky hair, torn shreds of dress, little children's shoes and playthings, were strewn around."

The sight of these things drove the soldiers to madness. "When they entered the charnel house, and read the writing on the walls [sentences of wretchedness and despair], and saw the still clotted blood, their grief, their rage, their desire for vengeance, knew no bounds. Stalwart, bearded men, the stern soldiers of the ranks, came out of that house perfectly unmanned, utterly unable to repress their emotions." Following the track of blood from the prison to the well, they found the mangled remains of all that martyred company. There the tender English mother had been cast with every indignity, and the child still living thrown down to die upon its mother's breast. Thus were they heaped together, the dying and the dead, in one writhing, palpitating mass.

Turning away from this ghastly sight, the soldiers asked only to meet face to face the perpetrators of these horrible atrocities. But the Sepoys, cowardly as they were cruel, fled at the approach of the English. Those who were taken had to suffer for the whole. "All the rebel Sepoys and troopers who were captured, were collectively tried by a drumhead court-martial, and hanged." But for such a crime as the cold-blooded murder of helpless women and children, death was not enough – it should be death accompanied by shame and degradation. The craven wretches were made to clean away the clotted blood – a task peculiarly odious to a Hindoo. Says General Neill:

"Whenever a rebel is caught, he is immediately tried, and unless he can prove a defence, he is sentenced to be hanged at once; but the chief rebels, or ringleaders, I make first clear up a certain portion of the pool of blood, still two inches deep in the shed where the fearful murder and mutilation of women and children took place. To touch blood is most abhorrent to the high-caste natives; they think by doing so, they doom their souls to perdition. Let them think so. My object is to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly, and barbarous deed, and to strike terror into these rebels.

"The first I caught was a subahdar, or native officer – a high-caste Brahmin, who tried to resist my order to clean up the very blood he had helped to shed; but I made the provost-marshal do his duty, and a few lashes made the miscreant accomplish his task. When done, he was taken out and immediately hanged, and after death, buried in a ditch at the roadside. No one who has witnessed the scenes of murder, mutilation, and massacre, can ever listen to the word mercy, as applied to these fiends.

"Among other wretches drawn from their skulking places, was the man who gave Nana Sahib's orders for the massacre. After this man's identity had been clearly established, and his complicity in directing the massacre proved beyond all doubt, he was compelled, upon his knees, to cleanse up a portion of the blood yet scattered over the fatal yard, and while yet foul from his sickening task, hung like a dog before the gratified soldiers, one of whom writes: 'The collector who gave the order for the murder of the poor ladies, was taken prisoner day before yesterday, and now hangs from a branch of a tree about two hundred yards off the roadside.'"

What became of Nana Sahib after the Mutiny, is a mystery that probably will never be solved. If he lived he sought safety in flight. Many of the Mutineers took refuge in the jungle. The Government kept up a hunt for him for years. Several times it was thought that he was discovered. Only a year or two ago a man was arrested, who was said to be Nana Sahib, but it proved to be a case of mistaken identity. In going up from Delhi we rode in the same railway carriage with an old army surgeon, whose testimony saved the life of the suspected man. He had lived in Cawnpore before the Mutiny, and knew Nana Sahib well, indeed had been his physician, and gave me much information about the bloody Mahratta chief. He said he was not so bad a man by nature, as he became when he was put forward as a leader in a desperate enterprise, and surrounded by men who urged him on to every crime. So long as he was under the wholesome restraint of English power, he was a fair specimen of the "mild Hindoo," "as mild a mannered man as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." His movement was as soft as that of a cat or a tiger. But like the tiger, when once he tasted blood, it roused the wild beast in him, and he took a delight in killing. And so he who might have lived quietly, and died in his bed, with a reputation not worse than that of other Indian rulers, has left a name in history as the most execrable monster of modern times. It seems a defeat of justice that he cannot be discovered and brought to the scaffold. But perhaps the judgment of God is more severe than that of man. If he still lives, he has suffered a thousand deaths in these twenty years.

My informant told me of the punishment that had come on many of these men of blood. Retribution followed hard after their crimes. When the rebellion was subdued, it was stamped out without mercy. The leaders were shot away from guns. Others who were only less guilty had a short trial and a swift punishment. In this work of meting out retribution, this mild physician was himself obliged to be an instrument. Though his profession was that of saving lives, and not of destroying them, after the Mutiny he was appointed a Commissioner in the district of Cawnpore, where he had lived, to try insurgents, with the power of life and death, and with no appeal from his sentence! It was a terrible responsibility, but he could not shrink from it, and he had to execute many. Those especially who had been guilty of acts of cruelty, could not ask for mercy which they had never shown. Among those whom he captured was the native officer who had given the signal, by raising his sword, to the masked battery to fire on the boats. He said, "I took him to that very spot, and hung him there!" All this sad history was in mind as we went down to the banks of the Ganges, where that fearful tragedy took place not twenty years before. The place still bears the name of the Slaughter Ghat, in memory of that fearful deed. We imagined the scene that summer's morning, when the stream was covered with the bodies of women and children, and the air was filled with the shrieks of despair. With such bitter memories, we recalled the swift retribution, and rejoiced that such a crime had met with such a punishment.

From the river we drove to "the well," but here nothing is painful but its memories. It is holy ground, which pious hands have decked with flowers, and consecrated as a shrine of martyrdom. Around it many acres have been laid out as a garden, with all manner of tropical plants, and well-kept paths winding between, along which the stranger walks slowly and sadly, thinking of those who suffered so much in life, and that now sleep peacefully beyond the reach of pain. In the centre of the garden the place of the well is enclosed, and over the sacred spot where the bodies of the dead were thrown, stands a figure in marble, which might be that of the angel of Resignation or of Peace, with folded wings and face slightly bended, and arms across her breast, and in her hands palm-branches, the emblems of victory.

The visit to these spots, consecrated by so much suffering, had an added tenderness of interest, because some of our own countrymen and countrywomen perished there. In those fearful scenes the blood of Americans – men, women, and children – mingled with that of their English kindred. One of the most terrible incidents of those weeks of crime, was the massacre of a party from Futteghur that tried to escape down the Ganges, hoping to reach Allahabad. As they approached Cawnpore, they concealed themselves in the tall grass on an island, but were discovered by the Sepoys, and made prisoners. Some of the party were wealthy English residents, who offered a large ransom for their lives. But their captors answered roughly: "What they wanted was not money, but blood!" Brought before Nana Sahib, he ordered them instantly to be put to death. Among them were four American missionaries, with their wives, who showed in that hour of trial that they knew how to suffer and to die. Of one of these I had heard a very touching story but a few days before from my friend, Mr. Woodside. When we were standing on the lower range of the Himalayas, looking off to "the snows," he told me how he had once made an expedition with a brother missionary among these mountains, which are full of villages, like the hamlets in the High Alps. He pointed out in the distance the very route they took, and even places on the sides of the successive ranges where they pitched their tents. They started near the close of September, and were out all October, and came in about the middle of November, being gone six weeks. After long and weary marches for many days, they came to a little village called Karsali near Jumnootree, the source of the sacred river Jumna, near which rose a giant peak, 19,000 feet high (though we could but just see it on the horizon), that till then had never been trodden by human foot, but which they, like the daring Americans they were, determined to ascend. Their guides shrank from the attempt, and refused to accompany them; but they determined to make the ascent if they went alone, and at last, rather than be left behind, their men followed, although one sank down in the snow, and could not reach the summit. But the young missionaries pressed on with fresh ardor, as they climbed higher and higher. As they reached the upper altitudes, the summit, which to us at a distance of ninety miles seemed but a peak or cone, broadened out into a plateau of miles in extent; the snow was firm and hard; they feared no crevasses, and strode on with fearless steps. But there was something awful in the silence and the solitude. Not a living thing could be seen on the face of earth or sky. Not a bird soared to such heights; not an eagle or a vulture was abroad in search of prey; not a bone on the waste of snow told where any adventurous explorer had perished before them. Alone they marched over the fields of untrodden snow, and started almost to hear their own voices in that upper air. And yet such was their sense of freedom, that they could not contain their joy. My companion, said Mr. Woodside, was very fond of a little hymn in Hindostanee, a translation of the familiar lines: