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NATIVE FIDELITY.

lighted with their savage glare the butcheries and plundering of those Europeans who lived near the native lines and were defenceless, while a strong European force was within hearing and sight of this calamity in their ordinary cantonments.

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measures for the safety of his family. He was
at home with them on that Sunday evening
when the mutiny broke out. The fires that
blazed through the darkness around, and made
it light as day, first informed him and them
of the revolt. They were unable to escape, for
fire was circling them round and round.
mob of the mutineers attempted to force an
entrance to their place, but they were saved
by the address and tact of their ayah, the chil-
dren's native nurse.

The

When the 11th Native Infantry collected to join their comrades in the mutiny, they were addressed by their chief, Colonel Finnis-a brother of the late Lord Mayor of London-who had served many years in the Indian army, and supposed that he could exercise sufficient in- The delay in marching the European soldiers fluence over his own men to restrain them from to the native lines occurred partly from their revolt; but he was shot dead while talking distance and partly from the danger to which with them, by the men of the 20th Native their own lines were exposed. At last, detachregiment. He was the only officer of the 11th ments of the 60th Rifles, the Carabineers, and who was killed at Meerut. Two officers of the the Horse Artillery arrived on the ground near 20th Native Infantry and three officers of the the burned bungalows; but the sepoys had 3rd Native Cavalry were also killed in the done their work. A few shots were exchanged mutiny; but the officers suffered less, in pro- | between them and the sepoys; the latter retired portion to their numbers, than the civilians--the cavalry pursued them for a short disand especially than the females and children. tance, but the night was dark, and the fugiFamilies found their bungalows blazing around tives marched on to Delhi without much molesthem as the first intimation of danger. Ser- tation. A loss of 150 to 200 men may have geant Law lived in a house beyond the canton- been sustained in the early part of their flight; ments, with his wife and six children. He was but with that the vengeance of the Europeans brutally murdered, with three of his children. in Meerut was appeased, and they returned. His wife and three children were found alive, but frightfully mangled-the first of those who suffered in this cruel war of men against babes and infancy. The ladies found in their homes without any protection were pitilessly slain. One lady was savagely mutilated in her garden, by which she had endeavoured to escape. The clothes of another were kindled before her murder was completed. The prisoners who had been released, and the mob of the city, committed those excesses which were so absolutely free from cause or from excuse. The entire property of the Europeans near the native lines perished in flames or in plunder; and although nights of greater horrors were destined to occur in other stations of India, yet none had equalled that of Meerut for fifty years.

Even there, however, some redeeming points in the native character appeared. The ayahs, or native nurses, protected and saved nearly all the young children. The native servants were generally faithful to their employers, and endeavoured to aid them in saving both their lives and their property. The men of a native cavalry regiment protected the bungalow and family of one of their officers, whom they seem to have respected and escorted his wife into the European lines.

A pleasing instance of native fidelity occurred to the late Mr. Greathead and his family. That gentleman was Commissioner of Meerut. He was well acquainted with the district, and yet he had, respecting the safety of the Europeans, felt no misgivings; or they were not of a character that led him to take unusual

The feeble efforts to destroy the mutineers on the first night of the mutiny originated partly in the hour of darkness fitly selected for their dark deeds, partly from the sudden appearance of this outburst, but chiefly because the soldiers were required to check the rabble of Meerut. In mutinies subsequently the officers expected the crime, and had adopted some plan of operation. In Meerut the trial came, in the words of the late Sir Charles Napier, like a flash of lightning. If General Hewitt had ordered the eighty-five mutineers to be shot, he might have brought the revolt forward by a day, yet he could not have prevented it, for the plot was carefully prepared, and the mutineers never doubted the reception that they would meet from the native regiments in Delhi.

If the position of Meerut was bad, that of Delhi was inexcusable. No person endowed with the average share of intellect necessary to conduct the common affairs of life, would have considered the largest magazine of military stores in the north western provinces of India safe in a city with 140,000 inhabitants, among whom hostile feelings to British rule had always prevailed, without a European guard. If Delhi be unhealthy for Europeans, it should not have been employed as a military arsenal: it should not have been carefully fortified; and the vast parks of artillery, the almost inexhaustible barrels of gunpowder, the shells and shot innumerable, should might have been stored at Meerut.

The mutinous regiments reached Delhi on Monday, the 11th May. Information had

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been previously received of their approach by Brigadier Graves, who held the command, which did not include a single British soldier, except the officers of three native regiments and a few men employed at the magazine. He paraded the regiments, and having addressed them, he decided to meet the mutineers without the city. The garrison marched out of that Cashmere gate at which a gallant exploit has been recently so successful. The sepoys evinced no feeling of disloyalty. As at other stations, they concealed the purpose rankling in their hearts under a profession of attachment to their colours, their officers, and the service. They had passed only a short distance from the walls when they met the 3rd Cavalry in mutiny. The 54th Regiment led. Their colonel ordered them to fire. They fired, not at the cavalry, but at the rising moon or the setting sun, and then divided to leave a path for the false horsemen. The officers of the 54th stood alone to bar the progress of the 3rd Cavalry, and they were rapidly cut down. Their colonel fell first, not before he had shot two of the mutinous cavalry; but only a few officers of the 54th and a greater proportion of the 38th were able to escape from the massacre of officers that followed the fraternisation of the 3rd Cavalry with the 54th Infantry. This closed the second movement in the great mutiny. The successful actors had studied their parts previously, and they acted them out better than treachery is generally performed. The plans appeared to be perfectly successful. The assailants and the garrison marched into Delhi together. At nightfall the city was theirs -the massacre had commenced it was nearly completed.

Brigadier Graves had retired with one corps of sepoys to the Flagstaff Tower. He sent warning to all the European inhabitants of Delhi to meet him there. This request never reached some of them; others received it too late. Many obeyed with heavy hearts, leaving behind them in the bloody city homes that had been the gatherings of years. Carriages were provided, so far as possible, for the females and children. The sepoys who had accompanied Brigadier Graves and their officers gradually melted away, until a small band served both their regimental colours and the artillery, planted for the defence of the fort. Major Graves was no longer a commander. His army of the morning had passed away by night. Shots that rung out stories of blood-shouts hard and harsh-the horrible language of a brutal mob-came borne on the night air from Gomorrha of the Jumna. The felons of Delhi, like those of Meerut, held high festival that night. Excesses of the most fearful nature, which the pen writes not, and the tongue speaks not, were done in that city of guilt,

where bloodshed was religion and guilt was worship.

But the Flagstaff Tower is shaken a roll like thunder close above-a piercing light, like to a comet's brightness, catch every ear and eye-sinner and sufferer for a moment cease to sin and suffer. What is the power that, just as hereafter the grand archangel who will stand on earth and sea shall, by the words of that last oath arrest, even in the action, every crime-arrests the murderer with his raised dagger the other murderer with his hammer nailing a Christian to the symbol of his faith-the murderer as he stabs the babe, whom he cannot cut from the arms of her dead mother-the murderer as, with lighted torch he strives to wring a groan from manhood's burning tongue-arrests the failing ear of the dying, who tries to catch the last sob of his slaughtered boy-arrests the fading eye that sends its last gleam of sorrow downwards to the mangled remains of the dead and the loved, now happily gone from pain-arrests the fleeting soul of the broken-hearted soldier as he sees a day, a day of redder colouring still, some four months away, when there, upon those very streets of shame, and sin, and desperate sorrow, the firm tread of island men, the glimmer of their glancing bayonets, the dreadful scowl on brows where never before had cruelty set its mark, tell that not the hour of restoration-oh, grievous is the sorrow to breaking hearts; so far, far away, that it may never be-but the hour of justice; and vengeance is justice, and justice is vengeance; has come at last; what may the power be that lights up minaret and mosque, and casts upon the Jumna a redder light than a volcano's glow-that crush and glare, that seem to come through the very throat of hell-till living beings appear for a moment but stones cut by a skilful sculptor, near as cold, nigh as pale! They come of a devotion that Greece and Rome have never seen excelled, and yet the names of those who kept the magazine may pass away from our memory. Three officers, Sir Thomas Metcalfe, Lieutenant Willoughby, and Lieutenant Forrest were in the magazine when the mutineers marched into Delhi. Sir Thomas Metcalfe went out to obtain assistance, but he never returned. Lieutenant Willoughby closed and blocked the gates. Four six-pounders were trained against the gates, other guns were trained in position to command other entrances. Conductor Crow and Sergeant Stewart stood by the guns, and wrought them amid a shower from small arms. They were assisted by Conductors Buckley and Scully, and the officers. The guns were rapidly served with grape, and the grape was rapidly sunk in knots of the fierce traitors. A dismal slaughter—a dreadful slaughter-occurred among these evil men—a pitiable slaughter-if there had been space

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EXPLOSION OF THE DELHI MAGAZINE.

for pity left by the traitor's guilt-was done by that stern fire; but what a few men may avail against many thousands has been done. One officer is shot through the arm-one conductor is shot through the leg-resistance is hopeful no longer-it never was but hopeless, except for a stern vengeance-the sterner vengeance is to

come.

The train has been carefully placed by Lieutenant Willoughby. The match is in the hands of Conductor Buckley. The King of Delhi has supplied the sepoys with scaling-ladders. They swarm over the walls at every point. There is not a moment to lose, for those who would escape from an ordeal of fire, through which life can scarcely pass, and expect to live.

One moment more: it brings a hundred men to death, each moment more is worth five score of lives, but this is the last. Sampson like the little band prefer to die in dealing death around them. The match is applied, and but an instant, and over all arose the crush and glare, and in the dust a thousand bodies were cast high in that great destruction, and where they fell they perished. Our history has not a braver deed to tell than the explosion of the Delhi magazine. It reached not most unfortunately to all the military stores of that wicked city. The fighting of four long and weary months had to be fed from them; but it was the first signal blow that the mutineers received; and although the number who perished has been stated variously, yet it appears to have been little under the first statement of a thousand men.

Licutenant Forrest survived the explosion, Lieutenant Willoughby lived, burned and mutilated through days and nights of torture. He escaped from the city and wandered on the way to Umballah, where he died. "Their names will pass from memory."-Never, surely, while the country has granite to bear their inscription, for no fitter material could be found than the imperishable granite to tell posterity the names of men who, drawn suddenly from their daily engagements, exhibited a devotion to their land and their service that the bravest of the brave in all times would have rejoiced to emulate.

The explosion of the magazine signalled the retreat of the ladies and their friends from the Flagstaff Tower, and the renewal of those enormities that made Delhi a bye-wood among men. The civilians, the women, and the children from the Flagstaff Tower went on their several ways-some to Kurnaul, some to Meerut, in the conveyances that had been provided. They started all to great tribulation, the greater number through torture to their graves. The histories of their journeys are sorrowful memorials of endurance, and suffering from guilt and treason. A day came when the red vengeance that seemed to delay so long fell at last. Day by day it had been falling. Delhi had become a slaughter house to the mutineers. Its soil had been raised by the bodies of their dead; but for a time we pass over the flight and the

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siege to match the explosion of the magazine by another deed of signal daring.

Weeks, and months of fighting had passed. One General after another had been removed by death or sickness from that fatal command. Reinforcements had come in slowly and the insatiable siege swallowed them up as they came. September had drawn towards its centre. On fields at home, the reapers celebrated with glad hearts their harvest home. The night of the 13th had sped away, and the morning of the 14th had come.

From batteries, carefully masked, a storm of shell was thrown over the city. Hour after hour the hail of death and destruction fell upon its towers and walls. Day dawned, but the thick smoke from that hot artillery eclipsed the sun, and even through its darkness gleamed the fiery messengers to clear the way for the assault. At last the breaches were considered to be open, and the assailing columns were formed. That was the hour sought so long-come at last. None could doubt the desperate valour of the foemen behind those walls. They fought with death, the known result of their defeat; and although weaker now in the power and range of their guns, they had fought them until the masonry crumbled beneath their feet.

The assault has commenced, but a gate is closed still. It is that Cashmere gate through which the Delhi mutineers marched to join their allies from Meerut. The gate must be forced ; but a swarm of native marksmen are above and behind it. They can pour their fire on any advancing party with fatal precision. The most forlorn of all forlorn hopes is formed, Two officers of the Engineers, Lieutenant Home and Lieutenant Salkeld; two non-commissioned officers, Serjeant Burgess and Corporal Carmichael; two men from a Sikh contingent, and a bugler-carrying powder bags, dash at the gate. A desperate race it is, if they can ever reach it-and not a hope remains that they will ere return. But the country needs the Cashmere Gate, and they dash forward with their powder bags and matches, over ground where every footstep fell upon a bullet. This was no race against time, but against a hundred muskets, in tried and willing hands. The very daring of the men had unnerved for a moment the fire of the musketeers; but only for a moment -a shower of balls fell, and with them one of the gallant Sikhs; and now balls fell at every step, and Carmichael is shot-more balls, and Lieutenant Salkeld is hit; but he struggles on-more balls, and through them all the survivors reach the gate. The sepoys knew their errand well. Maddened with rage they lean over the parapets-they fire through the port-holes, within a few yards of these adventurers. Lieutenant Salkeld is shot again, and falls into the ditch, near the bugler. The powder bags are hung to the gate by Sergeant Burgess, Lieutenant Home, and their companion, the Sikh soldier. A regiment, panting for the charge, look on and ask

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Cashmere Gate. If we want many copyists of these deeds, we should make the relatives of those non-commissioned officers memorials of their bravery. How deeply might any man in England or Scotland blush to know that child or wife, that sister or mother, of their's suffered want-of their's who laid down their lives thus nobly for their country.

why are they not riddled by a hundred balls; | death like that ran by Lieutenant Home to the but rage is a bad quality in a sharpshooter. The enraged sepoys miss, and the adventurers are now in the ditch. An anxious moment seemed an hour. "That match has not caught Sir;" and Serjeant Burgess sprung up to apply another. This time the aim was better. He fell, but dying heard that his match had not missed. The powder bags had carried away the Cashmere Gate. One moment of patience had saved a valuable life; but it was lost. The bugler sounded the advance, and never bugle notes were more welcome than those that lured a hundred men onward, to their death. That moment again how long it seems. They are bounding over the ground before the gate. But sound the advance and the bugle-notes pealed forth loud and clearly over the musquetry's rattle, until the columns cleared the ditch, and the bright bayonets were dim behind the Cashmere Gate at Delhi. And men may listen to many an heroic story of battles yet to be fought; and men may search through poetry and history like romance for the traditions of the brave who perished in the past; but neither past nor future will give brighter deeds of self-sacrifice or life-yielding valour than the magazine and the Cashmere Gate of Delhi. Not James Stuart, bleeding and wounded amid his spearmen, but struggling till the darkness fell on Flodden, was a more chivalrous man than Sergeant Stuart serving his guns in the magazine; and never a hard riding border Home had race with

The Fakirs are fanatics. They are charged with the origin of the Hindoo rebellion; and Mr. Greathead told, when he lived, a beautiful anecdote of one Fakir. He found a European baby on the banks of the Jumna. He lifted it up and carried it to Meerut. The way was long, and the Fakir had to seek assistance as he moved on with the hated Feringhee child. The Sowars wanted to kill and the Fakir to save the child. Holy man as he was, they struck at the poor infant in his arms, and they were sore and swollen in protecting it. At last he reached the station, and gave the infant to its own people. They offered him money. The Fakir gently refused their gift. They pressed him much. Water is the grand necessity of the tropics. Make a well, said the Fakir, and call it by my name. well spring of a good heart forced their way through the layers of prejudice, and the strata of superstition, in the Fakir's mind, and they were very beautiful, clear as crystal, and greatly to be admired.

The

POLITICAL NARRATIVE.

THE DECEMBER SESSION.

THE meeting of Parliament on next Thursday, becomes more interesting as the date draws nearer; and the necessity for the session grows stronger. Each day makes an impression in both respects. Some journals continue the delusion that money will not be required for Indian outlay. If they be correct, it still would be better to be disappointed in one way than another. We fear that they are incorrect, and the disappointment will all be on their side.

India must have a large quantity of silver hidden or hoarded, here and there, for which the owners would be wise to accept a good and lively interest, while that may be obtained; but they may be deaf to persuasion. We cannot afford to raise compulsory or forced loans. Financing of that description is out of our way. The lenders must be allowed to satisfy themselves with the security; and if they will not be satisfied there can be no loan.

The Government, according to common and current reports, intend to take the direct management of India into their own keeping. If that

resolution be carried, then the Company will be discharged; but arrangements involving the complicated negociations necessary for that purpose cannot be completed in the haste of an extraordinary session Something is required before the close of December. That something is, we presume, a guarantee for money. A promise to reconsider the entire East India Company's existence may be racked to the guarantee; but can only be fulfilled after the commencement of the new year.

The Act of Indemnity for the breach of the Banking law of 1844 is required, but it would pass in three or four days. As the law itself has been suspended, no difficulty exists in suspending the standing orders of both Houses, and passing pardon to the ministry in two days. The session was entirely unnecessary for that purpose; but the Government will at once propose ; according to another common rumour, the expansion of the currency of the Bank of England, based on national securities, from fourteen to twenty millions. This alteration of the figures would change completely the operation of the Bank Charter

POLITICAL NARRATIVE.

Act. A bolder step is mooted in some quarters. The additional issue of six millions would be absorbed more easily, it is supposed, if they consisted of one pound notes, which would be readily paid for wages, and would at once release that number of sovereigns. To that change greater opposition would be made, but nothing effectual could be done against the Ministerial majority, especially when the bullionist theory has altogether fallen through, and become entirely inoperative.

THE UNITED STATES.

The intelligence from the United States in this country is down to the 19th November. The crisis is said to be over there-pretty much, we believe, as a bonfire is over, when the fuel is turned into ashes, and little more can be done. It is a remarkable fact, that a body of burglars had robbed one country bank of 22,000 dollars, for they must have been bold burglars who ex. pected to find dollars in one of these institutions. A more serious matter had occurred in the Bank of Philadelphia, where a sum of £370,000 is deficient, without any explanation. The Bank of Philadelphia is only an example, on a contracted scale, of the conduct of the entire Union. It has a large deficiency in its accounts with the world, for which nobody can give a good reason; and least of all the world can any of these persons afford a good reason for the lamentable occurrence from whom it should be required.

The numerous operatives in the large American cities out of employment, produce a comparatively novel excitement in them. Meetings in New York occurred daily, and resolutions, cast in a rough mould, were passed. A military guard had been placed at dangerous points, but they had not found any action necessary. Plundering, to the date named, had been confined to two bakers' baskets, of which their boys had been robbed. New York is a city dangerous from its common wickedness; and, at present, want increases its tendencies to wretchedness. It ever has a large population prone to evil. Poverty now increases that population. The inhabitants of the other towns are as deeply tried as those of New York, but they are more patient.

General Walker contrived another expedition into Central America, to destroy life, pass time, and seize a kingdom. He had been arrested at New Orleans, but admitted to bail. The arrest must be merely a compromise, or a convenience, since he has been bailed; for he is backed by money to pay the expense of hostilities, and has forfeited his security.

We do not find in the papers or private reports any reason to suppose that the Union will have a rapid revival of prosperity. The severity of the shock precludes this hope, and the reversion from this country, and Europe in general, may even be fatally felt by the houses that have kept their ground in the hope of help or time from this side of the Atlantic. The great reduction in the

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value of produce will also affect all interests in the Union. The cotton-holders of the Southern States will find themselves much poorer than they anticipated; while the dealers in corn and flour in the north and west will be obliged to reduce the estimate of their property, by a large sum.

The demand for European manufactures in the Union will be limited for a considerable time. The bonded warehouses of New York alone contain goods valued at seven millions sterling. The Custom-houses of other ports must have goods to the value of three millions more, making in all ten millions in suspense. This stock must by some means come ultimately on the market; and for the next six months form an adequate supply.

THE MORMONS IN THE STATES.

The disciples of this new and sensual creed, which intimately resembles Mohamedanism in immoral tendencies, have mustered nearly one hundred thousand persons in the State of Utah. That residence of the saints, as they delight to be termed, who are not ascetic or self-denying in their creed, is difficult of access. It is west from the springs of the great American rivers which enter the Atlantic, and at the head waters of those which flow into the Pacific. A ring of mountains surround the vallies of Utah, The government of the region is in the possession of the Mormon elders. These gentlemen are Oriental in their views, and maintain harems of scandalous extent. Polygamy appears to be the law and rule of the place, although, all those who have observed the difficulty of bringing the sexes to an equality in new colonies, must be surprised at the existence of polygamy in out of the way Utah. The fact s, however, undoubted, whatever wonder those who hear of its existence may feel at the possibility of that vice and wretchedness which it secures. The Government of the United States had determined to enforce their laws among the Mormons, and a large force had been forwarded from the towns of the west to support this resolution. Information has been received that the leaders of this army could not advance in time to accomplish their object. By this date, and indeed long before this time, the mountains which have to be traversed would be impassable from snow, and the general state of the weather. No doubt exists that this civil war of the far west must be suspended until the spring time of 1858; but a more difficult matter exists in the absence of regular war. The Government of the States could blockade the Mormons in all directions, and prevent them from receiving supplies of material or of As, however, their conduct is only suspicious, and absolute resistance has not been given to the orders of the general government, the latter can scarcely prevent the ordinary flow of commerce and peaceful travellers. Happily, the same reasons that prevent the advance of the army, in a great measure retard all other travellers; and

men.

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