Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1895-01-05

wall and water there were 40, 900 Sc
poys, all armed Twelve hundred Brit
ish soldiers were to take that city.
Nicholson. the immortal general, COM
manded them, and you must visit his
grave before you leave Delhi. He fell
leading his troops. He commanded them
even after being mortally wounded.
You will read this inscription on his
tomb:
john Nicholson, who led the assault
of Delhi, but fell in the hour of victory.
mortally wounded, and died Esd Sep
TENDER, 1857, aged 35 years. +"
The Cashmere Gate.
With what guns and men General
Nicholson could muster he had laid
siege to this walled city filled with
devils. What fearful odds! Twelve hun
drad British troops, uncovered by any
military works, TO take city surround
ed by firm and high masonry, ON the
top of which were ia guns and defend
ed by 40, 900 foaming sepoys. A larger
percentage of troops fell here than in
any great battle l happen to know of.
The Crimoan percentage of the fallen
was a. As, but the percentage of Delhi
was 37.9. Yet that city must be taken,
and it can only be taken by such cour-
age as had never been recorded i'll al
the annals of bloodshed. Every charge
of the British regiments against the
walls and gates had been beaten back.
The hyenas Of Hindooism and Moham-
mechanism howled over the walls, and
the English army could do nothing but
bury their own dead. But at this gate
stand and watch an exploit that makes
the page of history tremble with agita-
tion.
This city has ten gates, but the most
famous is the one before which we now
stand, and it is called Cashmere gate
Write the words in red ink because of
tho carnage. Write them in letters of
light for the illustrious deeds. Write
them i'll letters of black for the bereft
and the dead. Will the world ever for
get that Cashmere gate? Lieutenant
Salkeld and Home and Sergeants Bur
CESS, Carmichael and Smith offered to
take bags of powder to the foot Of that
gate and set them on fire, blowing open
the gate, although they must die i, Co
ing it. There they go just after sunrise,
each one carrying sack containing "a
pounds of powder, and doing this under
the fire of the enemy
Lieutenant Home was the first to
jump into tho ditch, which still re-
mains before the gate. As they go, one
by one falls under the shot and she'll
One of the mortally wounded as he
falls hands his sack of powder with
box of lucifer matches to another, tell
ing him to fire the sack, when, with
an explosion that shook the earth for
20 miles around, part of the Cashmere
gate was blown into fragments, and the
bodies Of some of these heroes wero so
scattered they were never gathered for
funeral or grave or monument The
British army rushed in through the
broken gate, and although six days of
hard fighting were necessary before the
city was III complete possession the
crisis was past. The Cashmere gate
open, the capture of Delhi and all it
contained of palaces and mosques and
treasures was possible.
Lord Napier Of Magdala, of whom
Mr.. Gladstone spoke to me so affection
ately when was his guest at Hawarden,
England has lifted a monument near
this Cashmere gate, with the names Of
the men who there fell inscribed there
Gu. That English lord, who had seen
courage on many battlefield, visited
this Cashmere gate and felt that the
men who opened it with the loss CT
their own lives ought to be commend
rated, and hence this cenotaph. But, aft
Ct all, the best monument is the gate
itself, with the deep gouges i'll the brick
wall Oh the left side made by two bomb
shells, and the wall above torn by ten
bombshells, and the wall on tho right
side defaced and scraped and plowed
and quilted by all styles of long reach
ing weaponry. Let the words Cash
mere gate, as synonym for patriot
ism and fear essness and self sacrifice,
go into all history, all art, all litera-
ture, all time. all eternityl My friends,
that kind of courage sanctified will yet
take the whole earth for God. Indeed
tho missionaries now at Delhi, toiling
amid heathenism and fever and cholera,
ard far away from home and comfort,
and staying there until they drop into
their graves, are Just as brave in tax
ing Delhi for Christ as were Nicholson
and Home and Carmichael in taking
Delhi for Great Britain. Take this for
the first sermonic lesson.
Vanished Glories.
Another thing you must see il you
go to Delhi, though you leave many
things unseen, is the palace of the mo-
2uls 1t is an Enclosure 1000 yards by
500 You enter through a vaulted hall
nearly 400 feet long. Floors of Floren-
tine mosaic and walls once emeralded
and sapphired and carbuncled and dia-
monded. | said to the guide, "Show us
where once stood the peacock throne.
Here it was, he responded. All the
thrones of the earth put together would
not equal that for costliness and bril-
lance. 1t had steps of silver, and the
seat and arms We're of solid gold. 1t
cost about $780, 900, 900. 1t stood be-
tween two peacocks, the feathers and
plumes of which were fashioned out of
colored stones. Above the throne was
life size parrot cut out of one emerald
Above all was canopy resting on IL
columns of gold, the canopy fringed
with pearls. Seated here, the emperor
on public occasions wore crown CON
tanning, among other things, the Koh-
incor diamond, and the entire blaze of
coronet cost $40, $50, 600. This superb
and once almost systematically beauti-
ful room has imbedded in the white
marble wall letters of black marble,
which were translated to me from Per
ian into English as meaning:
If on the earth there be an Eden of bliss,
That place is this, is this, is this, is this.
But the peaoocks that stood beside
the throne have flown away, taking all
the display with them, and those white
marble floors were redeemed with
slaughter, and those bathrooms ran
with blood, and that Eden of which the ]