on the following morning. The infatuated
and blinded governor, his soul burning with the prospect of gain,
slumbered on his couch of supposed safety. Each of these palanquins was
to be permitted to carry one female belonging to the rajah's family;
but, instead, each in reality contained a soldier dressed in the
habiliments of the female sex, and veiled to hide his huge moustaches.
To each of those doolies were eight bearers; in the palanquins were
their arms, hidden from view. Those hundred doolies went up without the
slightest suspicion, and they were ranged around the governor's house.
The sequel may be readily guessed: no sooner were the supposed bearers
relieved of their loads than they flew to arms, and thus got possession
of the fort of Callenger.

The army being now formed and complete, with every requisite for a long
campaign, I put the implements of my office in lashing order. My post of
baggage-master being a situation which is, I believe, peculiar to India,
it may not be improper to state its duties, &c. He is a staff-officer, and,
when not employed in his particular department, is attached to the suite of
the commander of the division, as much as the commissary-general,
quartermaster-general, or any other staff-officer of the division. On
the line of march, he is held entirely responsible that neither men nor
baggage precede the column of march, and that they are on their proper
flank, which is regulated by the general orders of the day. If the
reader recollect what I before stated, that he may safely calculate ten
followers in a Bengal army to every fighting man, and when he is
informed that, according to calculations made in our camp, including the
several native contingents we had with us, our followers were not less
in number than eighty thousand, men, women, and children, some thirty
thousand of whom followed the army for what they could pick up, by fair
means or otherwise, my situation cannot be supposed to have been a
sinecure. It was truly one of great labour and activity. I had twenty
men belonging to a corps of local horse. These men were provided with
long whips, and placed at my disposal. To attempt to talk the numberless
camp-followers into obedience was quite out of the question; and,
therefore, these whips were for the purpose of lashing them into
something like discipline. To the great number of human beings I have
spoken of must be added fifty elephants, six hundred camels, five
thousand bul