d of being carried in the bucket, as is the custom with our
British Cavalry. Several of the enemy's loose horses were going about
with carbines on their saddles, while their dismounted riders were at
an enormous disadvantage in trying to defend themselves from their
mounted adversaries with only their swords. I saw, too, one of
Watson's men saved from a fierce cut across the spine by having his
carbine on his back. More recent experience has quite satisfied me
that this is the only way this weapon should be carried when actual
fighting is going on.

Three more marches brought us to Cawnpore, where we arrived on the
26th October.

We now for the first time heard the miserable 'story of Cawnpore.' We
were told how, owing to Sir Hugh Wheeler's misplaced belief in the
loyalty of the sepoys, with whom he had served for upwards of half a
century, and to the confiding old soldier's trust in the friendship of
the miscreant Nana, and in the latter's ability to defend him until
succour should arrive, he had neglected to take precautionary measures
for laying in supplies or for fortifying the two exposed barracks
which, for some unaccountable reason, had been chosen as a place of
refuge, instead of the easily defensible and well-stored magazine. Our
visit to this scene of suffering and disaster was more harrowing than
it is in the power of words to express; the sights which met our eyes,
and the reflections they gave rise to, were quite maddening, and could
not but increase tenfold the feelings of animosity and desire for
vengeance which the disloyalty and barbarity of the mutineers in other
places had aroused in the hearts of our British soldiers. Tresses of
hair, pieces of ladies' dresses, books crumpled and torn, bits of work
and scraps of music, just as they had been left by the wretched owners
on the fatal morning of the 27th June, when they started for that
terrible walk to the boats provided by the Nana as the bait to induce
them to capitulate.[2] One could not but picture to one's self the
awful suffering those thousand Christian souls of both sexes and
of all ages must have endured during twenty-one days of misery and
anxiety, their numbers hourly diminished by disease, privation, the
terrific rays of a June sun, and the storm of shot, shell, and bullets
which never ceased to be poured into them. When one looked on the
ruined, roofless barracks, with their hastily constructed parapet and
ditch (a mere apology for a defe