The Sun.
London, England, 1857-11-06 00:00:00

BLOWING FROM GUNS AT PESHAWUR•

It was an awfully imposing scene ! All the troops,
European and native, armed and disarmed, loyal
and disaffected, were drawn up on parade, forming
three sides of a square, and drawn up very care-
fully, you may be sure, so that any attempt on the
part of the disaffected to rescue the doomed prison-
ers would have been easily checked. Forming the
fourth side of the square, were drawn up the guns
(9-pounders), ten in number, which were to be
used for the execution. The prisoners, under a
strong European guard, were then marched
into the square—their crimes and sentences read
aloud to them, and at the head of each regi-
ment : they were then marched round the square/
and up to the guns. The first ten were picked out
I —their eyes wt-re banded, and they were bound to
I the guns, their backs leaning against the muzzles,
and their arms fastened to the wheels. The port-
tires were lighted, and at a signal from the Artil-
-I,.ry-Major, the guns were fired. It was a horrid
sight that then met the eye, a regular shower of
human fragments of heads, of arms, of legs, ap-
peared in the air through the smoke, and when
that cleared away, these fragments lying on the
ground—fragments of Hindoos and fragment% of
Mussulmans, all mixed together, were all that re-
mained of those ten mutineers. Three times more
was this scene repeated ; but so great is the dittgust
we all feel for the atrocities committed by the re bell,
that we had noroom in our hearts for any feelinil of
pity ; callousness was depicted on every European's
face; a look of grim satisfaction could even be 643e11
in the countenances of the gunners serving the galls-
But, far different was the effect on the native porti.°ll
of the spectators; their black faces grew ghastly pale
as they gazed breathlessly at the awful speet sacra.
You must know that this is nearly the only form in
which death has any terrors for a native. If he is
hung, or shot by musketry, he knows that his :friends
or relatives will be allowed to claim his body, 011"
will give him the funeral rites required by his reli-
gion ; if a Hindoo, that his body will be burns"
with all due ceremonies ; and if a Mussulman, 091,
his remains will be decently interred, as dir.sete"
in the Koran. But if sentenced to death in. this
form, he knows that bis body will be blown into *
thousand pieces, and that it will be altogether intros"
Bible for his relatives, however devoted to him, to
be sure of picking up all the fragments of his ow*
particular body ; and the thought that perhaps gh
limb of a different religion to himself might! possi•
bly be burned or buried with the remainder of
own body, is agony to him. But notwithsti
this, it was impossible for the mutineers' dires t hater
not to feel some degree of admiration for flits will
in which they met their deaths. Nothing in' their
il
lives became them like the leaving of them. tcof tbe
whole forty, only two showed any signs of fear, and
they were bitterly reproached by the others Ifor..!`:
disgracing their race. They certainly diedl ht;
men. After the first ten had been disposed of, the
next batch, who had been looking on all the torte'
walked up to the guns quite calmly and unfalt eringtn
and allowed themselves to be blindfolded a aid tl•
•
up without moving a muscle, or showing the
slightest sign of fear, or even concern. Whei zee had
these men this strength ? Their religion, be id **
may be and is, in all other points, at le: wit ,_l2l-
friends them well at the hour of death ; it t
Le. die.
them well that great and useful lesson, how tit,
—Letter from, Peshawier in Blackwood's 211"at7cas"
for November.