trial and condemnation, all prisoners found guilty of having taken part in the murder of the European women and children, were to be taken into the slaughter-house by Major Brace's méhter[4] police, and there made to crouch down, and with their mouths lick clean a square foot of the blood-soaked floor before being taken to the gallows and hanged. This order was carried out in my presence as regards the three wretches who were hanged that morning. The dried blood on the floor was first moistened with water, and the lash of the warder was applied till the wretches kneeled down and cleaned their square foot of flooring. This order remained in force till the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell in Cawnpore on the 3rd of November, 1857, when he promptly put a stop to it as unworthy of the English name and a Christian Government. General Neill has been much blamed for this order; but in condemning the action we must not overlook the provocation. The general saw more of the horrors of Cawnpore than I did; but what I saw, and the stories which were told by natives who claimed to have been eye-witnesses of the horrible scenes which they described, were enough to make the words mercy and pardon appear a mockery; and in passing judgment on him we must not forget the proclamations of the Nânâ Sâhib. These have often been published, and I will only give one extract bearing on the murder of the women and children. The extract is as follows, and was part of a proclamation placarded all over Cawnpore: "To extinguish a fire and leave a spark, to kill a snake and preserve its young, is not the wisdom of men of sense."

However, let General Neill speak for himself. The following is a copy of one of his own letters, taken from Colonel White's Reminiscences. On page 135 he writes: "The Well and Slaughter-house, Cawnpore.—My object was to inflict a fearful punishment for a revolting, cowardly, and barbarous deed, and to strike terror into the rebels. The first I caught was a subadar or native officer, a high-caste Brahmin, who tried to resist my order of the 25th of July 1857, to clean the very blood which he had helped to shed; but I made the provost-marshall do his duty, and a few lashes compelled the miscreant to accomplish his work. When done he was taken out and immediately hanged, and buried in a ditch by the roadside. No one who has witnessed the scenes of murder, mutilation, and massacre can ever listen to the word 'mercy' as applicable to these fiends."

As already said, before condemning General Neill's order we must give due weight to the terrible provocation, the horrible scenes he saw, and the still more horrible stories he heard related by natives who either had or pretended to have been eye-witnesses of the facts they described. Even after the lapse of thirty-five years such horrors cannot be calmly contemplated; they can only be hinted at here. Such stories were common in camp, and believed not only by the soldiers in the ranks, but by officers of position; and in judging General Neill's order we must give due weight to the passionate nature of the man, and recollect that General Havelock, his senior, must have approved of the order, or he would have cancelled it.

But enough of massacre and revenge for the present; I shall return to General Neill's order when I describe my revisit to Cawnpore. In the meantime I should much like to know whether the late Major A. H. S. Neill, who commanded the Central India Horse, and was shot on parade by Sowar Mazar Ali, at Augur, Central India, on the 14th of March, 1887, was a son of General Neill of Mutiny fame. Mazar Ali was sentenced to death by Sir Lepel Griffin, as Governor-General's agent; but I did not see a full account of the trial, and I ask for the above information to corroborate a statement made to me, on my late visit to the scenes of the Mutiny, by a native who admitted that he had been an armourer in the rebel force at Cawnpore, but had joined the English after the defeat of the Gwalior Contingent in December, 1857.[5]

General Hope Grant's brigade and part of the Ninety-Third Highlanders crossed the bridge of boats at Cawnpore, and entered Oude on the 30th of October, with a convoy of provisions and ammunition en route to Lucknow. My company, with three others, remained in Cawnpore three days longer, and crossed into Oude on the 2nd of November, encamping a short distance from the bridge of boats.

On the morning of the 3rd a salute was fired from the mud fort on the Cawnpore side, from which we learned, to the great delight of the Ninety-Third, that Sir Colin Campbell had come up from Calcutta. Shortly after the salute some of our officers joined us from the Cawnpore side, and gave us the news, which had been brought by the Commander-in-Chief, that a few days before three companies of the Fifty-Third and Captain Cornwallis's company, No. 2, of the Ninety-Third, which had been left at Futtehpore, with part of the Naval Brigade under Captain William Peel, had formed a force of about five hundred men under the command of Colonel Powell of the Fifty-Third, marched out from Futtehpore to a place called Khujwah, and attacked and beaten the Banda and Dinapore mutineers, numbering over ten thousand, who had been threatening our communications with Allahabad. The victory for some time had been doubtful, as the mutineers were a well-equipped force, strongly posted and numbering more than twenty to one of the attacking force, possessing moreover, three well-drilled batteries of artillery, comprising eighteen guns. Colonel Powell was killed early in the action, and the command then devolved on Captain Peel of the Naval Brigade. Although hard pressed at first, the force eventually gained a complete and glorious victory, totally routing the rebels, capturing most of their guns, and driving the remnant of them across the Jumna, whence they had come. The company of the Ninety-Third lost heavily, having one officer wounded and sixteen men killed or wounded. The officer, Lieutenant Cunyngham (now Sir R. K. A. Dick-Cunyngham of Prestonfield, Edinburgh), was reported to have lost a leg, which caused general sorrow and regret throughout the regiment, as he was a most promising young officer and very popular with the men. During the day when more correct and fuller reports came in, we were all very glad to hear that, although severely wounded, the lieutenant had not lost a limb, and that the surgeons considered they would not only be able to save his leg, but that he might be fit to return to duty in a few months, which he eventually did, and was present at the siege of Lucknow.

During the afternoon of the 3rd of November more stores of provisions and ammunition crossed the river with some of Peel's 24-pounder guns, and on the morning of the 4th, long before daylight, we were on the march for Lucknow, under command of Colonel Leith-Hay, leaving Cawnpore and its horrors behind us, but neither forgotten nor disregarded. Every man in the regiment was determined to risk his life to save the women and children in the Residency of Lucknow from a similar fate. None were inclined to pay any heed to the French maxim that les représailles sont toujours inutiles, nor inclined to ponder and moralise on the lesson and warning given by the horrible catastrophe which had overtaken our people at Cawnpore. Many too were inclined to blame the Commander-in-Chief for having cancelled the brigade order of General Neill.

Before