The Press. — London, England, 1858-10-02 00:00:00

962 And, with respect to the profits of this exciting occupation, the author records elsewhere : Away we dug; it was a day of eager expectation and success. One of our party made tweutytwo ounces, and the others followed deeply in his wake. I, myself, with the assistance of my geological shovel, turned up sixteen small nuggets, some of them wise 1 with quartz, worth about two hundred and fifty dollars, and this with an amount of labour which could only t, . callel an amuse ment. Why Mr. Cornwallis came home is partly, though not satisfactorily, explained in the fol lowing passage : Now the real estate panic was at a high pitch, and I was just as impatient to vet to Europe as the majority of the people were to get to the diggings, for I had a certain defined apeculrtive object in view, which I was anxious to realize. I therefore resolved " instanter " to put my three first lots into the market and sell, and sell them I did within three hours; one, a corner allotment, for five thousand eight hundred dollars, the other two, adjoining, to another party, a speculator, for eight thousand dollars, who put them into the market at seven thousand dollars a lot immediately afterwards. The other three not being yet located, I could not have mold save at a great dis advantage. I therefore decided, and no doubt wisely, to hold them over till after my return from Europe, en route fir which I now intended proeeeding by the Republic. There is a good deal of smart light writing of the same nature as that which we have quoted, and, although we cannot accept the book as an authority upon the resources and prospects of the colony in process of formation, we can recom mend it to those who are curious as to the gene ral features which such a region presents, and, looking for amusement, are content to take an off-hand sketch while waiting for more carefully collected materials for forming their judgment. The Crisis in the Punjab, from the 10th of May until the Fall of Delhi. By Frederick Cooper, Esq., C.S. London: Smith and Elder. A " whiff of grapeshot "—so teaches Mr. Car lyle—may be sufficient, if administered at the critical moment., to quench a revolution. And this is true enough, when there is a Napoleon to administer it ; tbr men of Napoleon's stamp of character, while they have the genius to devise a bold stroke, have also the foresight to be pre pared with supplementary measures, in case the bold stroke should not have the desired result. The authorities in the Punjab at the commence ment of the Indian outbreak were not, perhaps, Napoleons, but they acted on Napoleonic prin ciples : they neither showed blind confidence in the native troops nor rashly irritated them by an appearance of impotent distrust; when they struck, the blow was heavy, and fell once for all ; and the consequence has been that they kept their own district in a state of comparative tran quillity, enabled General Wilson to take Delhi, and, humanly speaking, saved India. That in some instances they may have been too ready to strike, and that more blood was shed than was absolutely necessary for quelling the revolt, is probably true, and Mr. Cooper's volume appears to us to indicate such a conclusion ; but it would have been well for us, and scarcely less so for the rebels themselves, if the same prompti tude, even accompanied with the same severity, had everywhere been shown. We should not have had to deplore the fate of many gallant men whose only error was too implicit a confi dence in the men they had, perhaps, led to victory, and regarded almost like their own children; we should have saved an untold amount of treasure and munitions of war ; and women and children, on whose blackened re mains vultures have feasted, and a hellish vengeance expended its last atrocities, would in most instances have been removed altogether, or at least have taken refuge in some place of safety. Mecan Meer, near Lahore, was the first place in the Punjab which caught the contagion of the mutiny. On the 12th of May Sir John Lawrence was away at Rawul Pindee, but Mr. Robert Montgomery, the Judicial Commissioner. called a council of war at the civil station of Anarkullee, and moved that the four native regiments should be deprived of their ammuni tion. On receipt of further news from Delhi it was resolved to deprive them of their arms altogether. No evidence of these suspicions, however, was allowed to appear. "There was a " sound of revelry by night," for a ball was to take place at Mecan Meer, and the "beauty and the chivalry" of the station assembled accord- THE PRESS, OCTOBER 2, 1858. ingly. "But the ball soon languished ; strange " rumours got about the room concerning the " morning parade of all troops, which had been " announced for daybreak." To hold the four regiments (amounting to 2,300 men) in check, there were only 850 Europeans, and two troops of horse artillery. At the parade, the position of the troops was changed by a simple manoeuvre, and the intending mutineers found themselves confronted by loaded cannon and an European force of 300 men. The regiments laid down their arms, and marched sulkily back to quar ters. At Ferozepore, where there were enor mous military stores, the same tactics were adopted, and with nearly equal success. Irre gular troops were organized, rebel villages de stroyed, and the immediate crisis got over with out serious loss of European life. Nor were these open measures the only ones to which it was found necessary to have recourse. The in telligence of the intended revolt had been con veyed, not only through the post, but by means of special emissaries under all kinds of disguises. Fakeers became numerous in the city of Lahore, and the number of soi-disant amateurs of swords and matchlocks who thronged the bazaars under went an alarmingly rapid increase. A sharp look-out was kept, and any one who showed these tastes strongly was arrested and impri soned, pending the upshot of events" : Thus no half-measures were adopted. Moreover the principle that he who is not for us is against us was strictly followed. There was no pause. Treason and sedition were dogged into the very privacy of the harem, and up to the s acred sanctuaries of mosques and shrines. Learned moulvies were seized in the midst of a crowd of fanatic worshippers, and men of distinction and note were " wanted "at dead 'of night. Like aleugh-hounds, the district police, on the first scent of treason, and egged on by the certainty of reward, fastened on the track, and left it not until the astonished intriguer was grounded in his lair. As with the detectives of Vidocq, there were spies in the market-place, at the festival, in the places of worship, in the gaols, in the hospitals, in the regimental bazaars, among the casual knot of gossippers on the bridge, among the bathers nt the tanks, among the village circle round the well under the big tree, among the pettifogging hangers-on of the courts, among the stone breakers of the highways, among the dusty travellers at the serais. No man's tongue was his own property. Asiatic chicane was paralyzed before the newly-aroused volition of the Anglo-Saxon. That these measures were not at all unnecessary, appears from the tenor of the correspondence actually intercepted. One man wrote that the Government had mixed pulverized bones with the flour. At Jhelum a plot for the massacre of a whole British family was detected. At Peshawar a letter was opened containing a reply to some query as to the disposal of the Europeans :—" They " were all to be massacred without respect to " sex, age, or person." The recipient of this advice was, of course, hanged. Another letter asked for an answer as to the exact date of the mutitieers march and co-operation with their fellows at Kurnaul. Symbolic commerce could not, probably, be prevented. " Pearls,' that is, " white faces, were quoted low in the market ; " and red wheat,' i.e., Hindostan, looking up." Even in the Government school at Umrttsur a Ilindostanee coolly stated that the King of Delhi had dismissed Mr. Montgomery from his post, having " no further occasion for his services," and gave him permission to retire. The shops, here tofore devoted to peaceful quotations of Bass and pickles, became heated beyond capsicum-point by talk of swarthy politicians; and "a regular emissary " from Delhi, provided with suits of fakeer's clothes and other disguises, made his appearance to inaugurate the rising against the British. Great is his discomfiture on being apprehended and peeled. At Itoopur a sepoy tore down a Government proclamation ; native Christians are threatened in the streets; and budmashes do that which is right in their own eyes. The Vehm-gericht of the verandah, too, has sat upon its masters, and has pronounced that their time is come. General Ilewitt's butler of twenty years appears not to have received any tincture of fidelity from the number of corks he has drawn tbr that worthy warrior. The white face has wiped the last stain of curry from his mouth. Henceforth we will fold no more napkins for him—he shall be wiped out himself; and his spoons shall be ours ! Butler pockets said spoons incontinently, and for the dinner plates, never more to contaminate Asiatic fingers, he throws them into the air, and dances with fiendish exultation amid the broken British crockery ! But grim vengeance is at hand in the shape of Captain Hogg, the aide-de-camp, who (watchful, probably, over the hospitable board where he had so often carved) enters the room "at the unusual uproar," and allays the pre mature transports of that ras h d omestic by " ing him on the spot." On the other side, there were vigorous men in command, a population eager to be led against the Mussulmans and Hindoos, and staunch fidelity on the part of some of the most important of the native princes. A moveable column was organized, —not so difficult a matter as in the older provinces, for on the frontier the atmosphere of peace had not been long enough breathed to make such preparations feel strange or unusual. All the great military positions were rapidly secured. The 4th Native Infantry were quietly turned out of the hill-fort of Kangra by Major Younghusband. At Mooltan, which contained military stores to the amount of fifteen lakhs of rupees, and commanded the river communication with Bombay, the delicate opera. tion of disarming was intrusted to Major Cham berlain. All the troops in garrison were paraded, the Punjab infantry marched to cantonments by two separate roads, so as to take the suspected regiments in flank, while in front, at a distance of 200 yards, stood a masked battery, and more cavalry and infantry. There were not above sixty available Europeans at the station, and these were disposed around the guns. The operation was completely successful, and the disarming effected without the expenditure of a drop of blood, a result which justly earned a strong eulogy from Government. The native population was, as we have said, eager to be led against the insurgents : The Sikhs generally were most eager to aid in the capture of Delhi, from the existence ot'a most remarkable prophecy,—that they, in conjunction with lupee wallahs (hat wearers, or the British), who should come over the sea, would reconquer Delhi, and place the head of the king's son on the very spot where the head of Gooroo Teg Bahadoor had been exposed. one hundred and eighty years before, by order of Aurungzebe, the Great Mogul. This vaticination was almost literally carried out, for when the ga!lant Hodson had captured the old king and shot the two sons, his Sikh ressalilar, remembering the oracle, secured its fulfilment ; and for three days, on the spot foretold, the bodies of the Icing's Bons lay • spectvele to men ; the glazed eyes of these miscreants staring sternly out of their dead heads on the very scene where they had ordered and wituessed the massacre of the English women and children. Our third element of strength was the remark able fidelity of most of the native princes. Cer tainly, as Mr. Cooper remarks, they had a good deal of Company's paper in their possession, and, even if successfill in a revolt, they could only hope to play second fiddle to the Great Mogul; still, they had some cause of complaint against us, and neither looked on our difficulty as their opportunity, nor refused to help us to the utmost of their power. The Rajahs of Bikaneer and Kuppoorthullah furnished valuable assist ance, and the Rajah of Putteealah, who "seemed "to sleep with one eye open to the interests of "the British army," both helped to keep the line of road open, and sheltered with princely hospitality the fugitives from Ilansi and llissar. Where disarming had been too late, or in effectual, stronger punishments were resorted to, which Mr. Cooper chronicles with somewhat of unctuous appreciation. It is difficult, herhaps, not to acquire a taste for blood—if tapped from a black skin—under such circumstances; hence he enlarges on the " snug disposition" for a com bined spectacle of hanging and blowing front guns, by which the British Government "asserted itself" (we do not quite make out where), and which is certainly calculated to shock what he calls " the pacific English mind" which looks on such proceedings as matters of painful nez.essity, not of ferocious exultation. Lieutenant Boswell, after the battle of Trimmo's Ghat, " having no ink," was forced to write a letter to the general "in blood, which was fresh and plentifill around " him ;" but Mr. Cooper is, perhaps, over fond of the material. The 26th Native Infantry, which had murdered Major Spencer, fled to the bank of the Ravee and took refuge in an island about a mile from the shore. By the exercise of extraordinary daring and decision they were captured (sixty-six sepoys submitting to be bound by one man!) and marched to Ujnulla while the "gracious moon" prevented a single escape. Part were confined in the police-station , part in a round tower. Rope had been ordered before the pursuing party went out; a dry well . afforded " a convenient solution" of t he difficulty I