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

BLOWING FROM GUNS AT PESHATVUE.

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, yon 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
(a-/;ounclers), ten in number, which were to b©
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
—their eyes were banded, and they were bound to
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-
lery-Major, the guns were fired. It was a horrid
*ight that then met the eye, a regular shower of
human fragments of heads, of arms, of legs, ap•
peered in the air through the smoke, and when
that cleared away, these fragments lying on the
ground—fragments of Hindoos and fragments 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 disgust
we all feel for the atrocities committed by the rebels,
that we had noroom in our hearts for any feeling of
pity ; callousness was depicted on every European's
face • a look of grim satisfaction could even be seen
in the countenances of the gunners serving the guns.
But far different was the effect on the native portion
of the spectators; their black faces grew ghastly pale
as they gazed breathlessly at the awful spectacle.
You must know that this is nearly the only form in
which death has any tet rurs 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, and
will give him the funeral rites required by his reli-
gion ; if a Hindoo, that his body will be burned
with all due ceremonies ; and if a Mussulman, that
his remains will be decently interred, as directed
in the Koran. But if sentenced to death in this
form, he knows that his body will be blown into a
thousand piecs, and that it will be altogether impos-
sible for his relatives, however devoted to him, to
be sure of picking up all the fragments of his own
particular body ; and the thought that perhaps a
limb of a different religion to himself might possi-
bly be burned or buried with the remainder of his
own body, is agony to him. But notwithstanding
this, it was imposs ble for the mutineers' direst hater
not to feel some degree of admiration for the way
in which they met their deaths. Nothing in their
lives became thorn like the leaving of them. Of the
whole forty, only two showed any signs of fear, and
they were bitterly reproached by the others for so
disgracing their race. -They certainly died like
men. After the first ten bad been disposed of, the
next. batch, who had been looking on all the time,
walked up to the guns quite calmly and unfalteringly,
and allowed themselves to be blindfolded and tied
up without moving a muscle, or showing the
slightest eign of fear, or even concern. Whence bad
these men this strength ? Their religion, bad as it
may be and is, in all other points, at least be-
friends them well at the hour of death ; it teaches
them well that great and useful lesson, how to die.
—Letter from, Peshawar in Blackwood's Magcrine
for November.