Dodd George
The History of the Indian Revolt and of the Expeditions to Persia, China and Japan 1856-7-8
To return to the agitating scenes within the city. Major Abbott, immediately on hearing of the explosion at the magazine, found himself placed in a painful position: urged to different courses by different persons, and doubtful how long his own regiment would remain faithful. He was requested by the commandant to send back two guns to the cantonment, as a means of defence; while, on the other hand, he was entreated by Major Paterson, and by the civil collector who had charge of the treasury, to retain his small force for guarding the various government establishments within the city. Major Abbott listened to this latter suggestion for a time, but then made arrangements for sending off the two guns to the cantonment. By this time, however, he found it was of little consequence what orders he gave: the native troops were fast getting beyond his control. The two guns, and some men of the 38th regiment, returned; the gunners had deserted on the road, and the guns had therefore been brought back again. A few of the native officers who were still faithful now importuned him to leave the city as soon as possible; he at first interpreted their request as an advice to hasten to defend the cantonment; but soon found that it bore relation to his own safety. Presently he heard shots whizzing in the mainguard. He asked what they meant, and was told: ‘The 38th are shooting the European officers.’ He then ordered about a hundred of his men to hasten with him to the rescue; but they replied: ‘Sir, it is useless. They are all killed by this time, and we shall not save any one. We have saved you, and we are happy; we will not allow you to go back and be murdered.’ The history of the Revolt presented many such incidents as this; in every native regiment there were some men who wished to remain faithful, and some officers who were favourites among them. The sepoys formed a ring round the major, and hurried him on foot along the road leading to the cantonment. He stopped some time at the quarter-guard, and sent a messenger to the saluting tower to obtain information of the proceedings in other parts of the city.
The sun was now setting, and evening approaching, giving omen of a night of danger and difficulty. Major Abbott espied two or three carriages belonging to officers of his own regiment, going northward on the road to Kurnaul; and on inquiry, he was told by the men at the quarter-guard: ‘Sir, they are leaving the cantonment; pray follow their example. We have protected you so far; but it will be impossible for us to do so much longer. Pray fly for your life!’ Willing as he was to remain at his post to the last, the major felt that the men around him were so far faithful as to deserve credence for what they had just uttered; and that his own life, if now taken, would be sacrificed without in any way contributing towards the retention of Delhi in British hands. He therefore replied: ‘Very well; I am off to Meerut. Bring the colours; and let me see as many of you at Meerut as are not inclined to become traitors.’ Major Abbott and Captain Hawkey now mounted one horse and started off after the carriages. They overtook some guns going the same road; but after a progress of four miles, the drivers refused to go any further, and insisted on driving the guns back again to Delhi. The officers, thus entirely deserted by the native troops, having no European troops with or near them, and being powerless to effect any good, rode or drove off to seek safety in other directions.
Major Abbott afterwards learned at what point in the day’s proceedings his own regiment, the 74th, first broke out in mutiny. As soon as the explosion of the magazine was heard, he ordered Captain Gordon to take a company with him, to see whether he could render any aid in that quarter; the captain found, however, not only that his aid would be useless, but that his men exhibited great unwillingness to move. Somewhat later, several officers of the 74th were about to march out with a detachment, when a ball whistled among them: Captain Gordon fell dead. Another ball was heard, and Lieutenant Revely was laid low. It now became a matter of life and death: each officer, without any imputation of selfishness, looking after his own safety. Among others, Ensign Elton made for the bastion of the fort, jumped over the parapet, descended into the ditch, clambered up the counterscarp on the other side, ran across the country to the cantonment, and then followed the road which many of the other officers had taken. Captain Tytler, Captain Nicoll, and some others, went towards Kurnaul; Major Abbott, Captains Hawkey and Wallace, Lieutenant Aislabie, Ensign Elton, and Farrier-sergeant Law, took the Kurnaul road for some distance, and then struck off on the right to Meerut, where they arrived at eight o’clock in the evening of Tuesday the 12th – thirty-six hours after the mutineers from Meerut had reached Delhi.
After stating that almost all the European inhabitants of Delhi had been murdered, except those who had at once been able to effect their escape, Major Abbott thus expressed the opinion which he formed during these two days of terrible excitement, concerning the successive steps of the mutiny at Delhi: ‘From all I could glean, there is not the slightest doubt that this insurrection has been originated and matured in the palace of the King of Delhi, with his full knowledge and sanction, in the mad attempt to establish himself in the sovereignty of this country. It is well known that he has called on the neighbouring states to co-operate with him in thus trying to subvert the existing government. The method he adopted appears to have been to gain the sympathy of the 38th light infantry, by spreading the lying reports now going through the country, of the government having it in contemplation to upset their religion, and have them all forcibly inducted to Christianity. The 38th, by insidious and false arguments, quietly gained over the 54th and 74th native infantry, each being unacquainted with the other’s real sentiments. I am perfectly persuaded that the 54th and 74th were forced to join the combination by threats that the 38th and 54th would annihilate the 74th if they refused; or, vice versâ, that the 38th and 74th would annihilate the 54th. I am almost convinced that had the 38th not been on guard at the Cashmere Gate, the results would have been very different; the men of the 74th would have shot down every man who had the temerity to assail the post.’ It may be that this officer, anxious to lessen the dishonour of his own regiment, viewed somewhat too partially the relative merits of the native troops; but it is unquestionable that the 74th remained faithful much longer than the 38th. To what extent the King of Delhi was really implicated, neither Major Abbott nor any other Englishman could at that time correctly tell.
It was not during the dire confusion of this terrible day that the course of events in the streets and buildings of Delhi could be fully known. The facts came to light one by one afterwards. When the 3d Bengal troopers, who preceded the mutinous infantry in the march from Meerut, arrived at the Jumna about seven in the morning, they killed the toll-keeper of the bridge of boats, took the money found in his office, and crossed the bridge. Arrived in Delhi, they hastened to the royal palace, where they made some sort of announcement of their arrival and its purport. Mr Simon Fraser, the commissioner for Delhi, Captain Douglas, his assistant, and one or two other officials, hearing of this movement, and seeing the approach of insurgent infantry on the other side of the river, hastened to the palace to watch the conduct of the royal personages at such a suspicious time. No sooner did they enter the palace precincts, however, than they were shot down. Shortly afterwards, the Rev. Mr Jennings, chaplain of the residency, was killed; as were likewise his daughter and another lady near him – after, it is to be feared, atrocities worse than death. It was seen that the insurgent troopers were in a state of the greatest excitement and fury, as if they had worked themselves up, by indulgence in the intoxicating bang, to a level with their terrible plans. While the military operations, already noticed, were going on at the Cashmere Gate, the magazine, and the cantonment, all the ruffians of Delhi and the neighbouring villages, eager for loot or plunder, joined the insurgents. Every European residence was searched: the troopers and sepoys seeking the lives of the inmates; while the rabble followed, and swept off every shred of property. Bungalows were fired one by one, until glaring sheets of flame were visible in every direction. Bands of Goojurs – a kind of Hindoo gipsy tribe – were lying in wait after nightfall all along the line of road twenty miles out of Delhi, on the watch for refugees. It was a day of jubilee for all the miscreants; they did not stay their hands when the Europeans had been pillaged, but attacked the houses of all the Hindoo bankers, carrying off great treasure. Some of the Europeans concealed themselves for a time within the palace gardens – a vain refuge, for they were all detected, tied to trees in a row, and shot or sabred by the mutineers. Many of the troopers, during the savage scenes of these days, pointed to the marks of manacles on their ankles; they were of the eighty-five who had been put in irons at Meerut on the preceding Saturday; and they now shewed how deep was the revenge which they intended to take for that degrading punishment. The military officers and their families were, from various causes, those whose fate became more publicly known; but the number of civil servants, Christians of humble grade, and half-castes, put to death, was very great. The bank-clerks, with their wives and children, were murdered; and similar scenes occurred at most of the public offices.
Mr Farrington, deputy-commissioner, when at Jullundur two or three weeks afterwards, received a written account from a native of the occurrences at Delhi during the days immediately following the Revolt – an account considered worthy of credence. A part of this narrative comprised the following sad tale: ‘On the third day they [the mutineers] went to a house near the mosque where some Europeans had taken refuge. As they were without water, &c., they called for a subadar and five others, and asked them to take their oaths that they would give them water, and take them alive to the king: he might kill them, if he liked. On this oath, the Europeans came out: the mutineers placed water before them, and said: “Lay down your arms, and then you get water.” They gave over two guns, all they had. The mutineers gave no water. They seized eleven children – among them infants – eight ladies, and eight gentlemen. They took them to the cattle-sheds. One lady, who seemed more self-possessed than the rest, observed that they were not taking them to the palace; they replied they were taking them by the way of Duryagunge (one of the gates on the river-side of the city). Deponent says that he saw all this, and saw them placed in a row and shot. One woman entreated to give her child water, though they might kill her. A sepoy took her child, and dashed it on the ground. The people looked on in dismay, and feared for Delhi.’ The imagination can, too truly, alas! fill up the deficient incidents in this tale of treachery. Mr Farrington deemed his informant worthy of reliance. He said: ‘The man has been with me. He speaks frankly, and without fear. He is able, evidently, to narrate many a harrowing tale; but I did not wish to hear any. He seemed really to recall with dismay what he had witnessed.’
The aged but wretched king of Delhi – wretched in having the hopes of earlier years revived, only to be crushed again – for a time distrusted the mutineers; he entertained misgivings that all might not end well. The shops and bazaars were being plundered; the king was in the palace; and some of those around him urged that order could be restored only by his assumption of the imperial purple. After three or four days, he went in a kind of state through the city, advising or commanding the people to re-open their shops, and resume their former commercial dealings – advice more easily given than acted upon; for the devastation had been terrible, striking grief into the more peaceful portion of the native inhabitants. The king assumed command in the city; he named Mirza Mogul commander-in-chief, and gave the title of general of cavalry to Mirza Abu Bukur; he collected around him eight or nine thousand mutineers and volunteers, who were posted at the several gates of the city, or cantoned in the Duryagunge Bazaar. Additional guns were placed on the ramparts; and the native sappers and miners were placed in command of the cannon in the old fort of Selimgurh. The Company’s treasury, one of the largest in India, is said to have been respected by the mutineers to this extent – that they did not appropriate it among themselves as spoil, but guarded it as belonging to their newly chosen leader, the King of Delhi. To shew how perplexed the Calcutta government must have been at the first news of these events, it may be mentioned that the king’s name was adverted to as that of a friend rather than an enemy. On the 14th of May, three days after the arrival of the Meerut mutineers at Delhi, Mr Colvin, lieutenant-governor of the Northwest Provinces, telegraphed from Agra to the governor-general as follows: ‘We have authentic intelligence in a letter from the king that the town and fort of Delhi, and his own person, are in the hands of the insurgent regiments of the place, which joined about one hundred of the troops from Meerut and opened the gates.’ Judged by the ordinary rules of probability, it would appear that the mutineers first secured the person of the king, and then compelled him to head them: the old man being further urged by the entreaties and threats of his intriguing sons and grandsons. It is difficult, under any other supposition, to account for his transmission of a message of information and warning to the chief British authority in those regions. On the 15th Mr Colvin sent a further telegraphic communication to Calcutta, containing this information: ‘The rebels have declared the heir-apparent king. They are apparently organising the plan of a regular government; they still remain in the place. Their policy is supposed to be to annex the adjoining districts to their newly formed kingdom. They are not likely, therefore, to abandon the country or leave Delhi; they have probably strengthened themselves there. They may have secured fifty lacs of rupees [half a million sterling].’ No further mention was here made of the old man; it was a younger relation who had been set up as king; and this younger prince may possibly have been the one whom the Marquis of Dalhousie had insisted should be the heir-apparent, with such prospective limitations of authority as the Company might hereafter declare to be expedient. The ordinary motives which influence men’s conduct would be quite strong enough to induce this prince to avail himself of any accidental or unexpected means of insuring the crown without the limitations here adverted to. Ambition was almost the only sentiment not absolutely degrading left to the pensioned, sensual, intriguing dwellers in the palace.
The details of this chapter have hitherto been confined chiefly to the course of events within the city – as collected from the dispatches of military officers, the letters from commissioners and other civil servants of the Company, and the published statements of Europeans who survived the dangers of the day. But we now come to adventures which, politically of less importance, touch more nearly the hearts and sympathies of those who would know how Englishmen, and more particularly Englishwomen, bore up against the accumulated miseries that pressed upon them. We have to accompany the fugitives to the fields and jungles, the ditches and rivers, the swampy marshes and scorching sandy roads; we have to see how they contended against privation and trial – on their way forty miles in one direction towards Meerut, or eighty miles in another towards Kurnaul. Many of the narratives of the fugitives, afterwards made public, supply details not furnished in any official dispatches; while they illustrate many points worth knowing – among others, the greater hostility of the Mohammedan than the Hindoo natives near Delhi, and the indications of individual kindness in the midst of general brutality. A selection from these narratives will suffice for the present purpose, shortened and thrown into a different form so as to throw light on each other, and on the general events of the day. In most cases, the names of the fugitives, especially of ladies, will be withheld, from a motive which a considerate reader will easily appreciate. This scruple must not, however, be interpreted as affecting the authenticity of the narratives, which was verified only too abundantly by collateral evidence.
We select first a family of three fugitives to Kurnaul. The wife of an officer of the 54th native regiment, in the forenoon of this eventful Monday, hastened with her child to the Flagstaff Tower; where, in accordance with the advice of the brigadier-commandant, many other families had assembled. The gentlemen remained outside on guard; the ladies assisted in loading the guns, and in other services towards the common defence of all. Here they remained many hours, in all the horrors of suspense; for the husbands and fathers of many were away, and their fate unknown. At length came the news that the 38th had openly revolted; that none of the native regiments at Delhi could now be depended upon; and that the inmates of the tower ought to effect their escape as speedily as possible. There had been one company of the 38th at the Flagstaff Tower all day; and as the building was very strong, and armed with two guns, the brigadier long deemed himself able to protect the numerous persons there assembled; but as soon as the defection of the main body of this regiment became known, all reliance on the smaller corps was at an end. Such carriages and horses as could be obtained were immediately put in requisition, and various parties hastened off, mostly northward on the Kurnaul road. The small group whom we have here under notice – namely, the officer with his wife and child, reached Kurnaul the next day; but danger was all around, and the fugitives were forced to continue their flight, as soon as they could obtain means of conveyance. It is touching to read how ‘baby’ occupied the mother’s thoughts through all this agitating escape. During a sojourn at a place called Thwanessur, on the road between Kurnaul and Umballa, they stopped at the assistant-commissioner’s house. ‘Before we had rested two hours we were alarmed by being told that a regiment of sepoys was come to attack us; we had to fly from the house and hide as best we could, under the bushes, &c., in the garden; and I kept dear baby in my own arms the whole time until morning.’ The alarm proved to be false, and the fugitives proceeded. They arrived safely at Umballa on the morning of Thursday the 14th, having left Delhi on Monday evening. That the brave wife was ‘quite fatigued and worn out’ may well be conceived when she adds, ‘for dear baby had never left me since we left Delhi.’
This adventure, however, was far exceeded in length, in privation, in strange situations, in hair-breadth escapes, by one which befell a party of four persons – an officer of the 38th regiment, an army surgeon, and their two wives: all of whom, in the wilderness of confusion, sought the Kurnaul route rather than that to Meerut. These ladies were among the many who sought refuge in the Flagstaff Tower. There they had the pain of witnessing the sufferings of poor Colonel Ripley, who, as already narrated, had been bayoneted by men of his own regiment, and had been brought thither for succour; they tended him as women only can tend the sick; but their ministrations were of brief avail. After hours of suspense, in which small hope was mingled with large despair, the necessity for escape became obvious. A little bitterness is expressed, in the narratives of some of the fugitives, concerning the delay in making any preparations for the escape of the women and children; and a few of the head officers are blamed for supineness; but those who suffer are not always, at the time, the best judges of the cause of their sufferings. When evening approached, many of the native coachmen drove away the vehicles belonging to the Europeans, and appropriated them, thus leaving the women and children in dreadful perplexity how to reach Kurnaul or Meerut. The two Englishwomen whose narrative we now follow were among the last of those who left the city, when evening was approaching. They were in a buggy, but had been parted from their husbands during the confusion of the arrangements for departure, and one of them had lost her little child. They drove on, with no male protector, across rugged fields, fearful of the high road: treated sometimes respectfully by the natives, but at other times robbed and vilely addressed. Even the velvet head-dress of one of them was torn off, for the value of the bugles that adorned it. A jewel-box had been brought away in haste, as the only treasure preserved; and it became every hour more uncertain whether this would be a prey to the spoilers. Returning to the high road, the ladies met some gunners with two guns; and as the men told them certain death would be the result if they took the road to Kurnaul, they drove in another direction to the Company’s garden outside Delhi. Here, marauding was everywhere going on; the poor ladies soon had the misery of seeing their carriage, horse, jewel-box, and most of their outer clothing reft from them. In the dead of the night they ventured to a neighbouring village. The surgeon, husband to one of the ladies, here managed to join them; but being enfeebled by previous sickness, and wounded in the jaw during the day’s exciting troubles, he was powerless as a defender, and – far from being able to succour others – needed succour himself. During the next fifteen hours were these three persons hiding in fields and huts, befriended by a few natives, and conscious that roving sepoys were near, ready for murder or pillage. Sallying forth again on the evening of Tuesday, they were speedily stopped by six men, who robbed them of a further portion of their scanty apparel, and only stopped short of murder when the officer’s wife pleaded for mercy, on the ground that she was searching for her husband and her child, both of whom had gone she knew not whither. The three fugitives walked all that night, the wounded surgeon dragging himself along. In the morning they were again accosted, and only escaped death by the ladies yielding up a further part of their attire, the only property they had left to give. During the remainder of that day they crept on, obtaining a little food and water from some villagers, who were, however, too much afraid of the sepoys to afford the fugitives the shelter of a roof; and it was terrible work indeed to roam along the roads with a burning sun overhead and burning sand under foot. They sat down by a well-side, and drank some water; but rude fellows accosted them, and after insulting the hapless women, compelled them to withdraw. They next encountered a party of irregular horse, who had not yet joined the mutineers; the men were at first inclined to befriend them; but fears of the consequences supervening, they soon deserted the fugitives. Here were these two Englishwomen, gently nurtured, and accustomed to all the amenities of good society, again compelled to wander like miserable outcasts, helping along a male companion whose under-jaw had been shattered, and who was otherwise in a weak state. They crawled on during another night, and then reached a village, which, as they saw it was Hindoo, they did not scruple to enter. Kindness was accorded to them for one whole day; after which the humane natives, timid lest the sepoys should burn their village if they heard of Feringhees having been harboured, declared they could no longer afford shelter. Once more, therefore, were the fugitives driven forth: having seen renewed symptoms that the sepoys, or rather the marauding ruffians, would not scruple to murder them, if opportunity offered. They had now been five days wandering about, and yet were only ten miles distant from Delhi: so completely had each day’s plans been frustrated by the events of the next day. Again they entered a friendly village, and again were they compelled soon to depart, after receiving simple but kind assistance. No villagers, it was found, were free from dread at having assisted a Feringhee. Once they hid for shelter under a bridge; but an armed ruffian detected them, and behaved so unbearably towards the women that the surgeon, who was a Roman Catholic, took a gold cross from his bosom, and gave it as the price of their freedom from further molestation: a wounded, shattered, sinking man, he could not offer them a strong arm as a shield from insult. On the night of the 17th, at a little more than twenty miles from Delhi, they were glad to obtain the shelter of an outhouse containing twenty cows, the only roof that the owner dared to offer them. They made an attempt to have a letter forwarded to Kurnaul, praying for assistance; but none in those parts could be depended upon for faithfulness beyond an hour or two: so much was there of treachery on the one hand, and timidity on the other. On the 18th they heard that Major Paterson, of the 54th regiment, was in the same village as themselves; and he, powerless to succour, contrived to send a short message to them, written with a burnt stick on a piece of an old broken pan. Shortly afterwards they were greatly astonished, and not a little delighted, to see an officer, the husband of one of the ladies, enter the village; but more like a naked savage, blistered from head to foot, than like an English gentleman.
An eventful tale had this officer to narrate. When the scenes of violence on the 11th at Delhi had reached such a point that to remain longer was to meet certain slaughter, he sent off his little boy with friends towards Meerut, and saw his wife and her lady-companion start for Kurnaul. After being robbed of his horse, and having three bullets sent through his hat, and one through the skirt of his coat, he ran past the blazing houses of the cantonment, and, being ill at the time, sank down under a tree exhausted. A gang of ruffians found him, stripped him, robbed him of everything, and endeavoured, Thug-like, to strangle him – using, however, the sleeve of his own shirt instead of a silken cord. Happily the choking was only partial; he recovered, staggered on a mile or two, rested briefly in a hut, and then walked twelve miles to Alipore in a broiling sun. He obtained a little water, a little bread, and a few fragments of clothing, but was refused shelter. He wended his painful way barefoot, keeping to ploughed fields as safer than the high road, and reached a village where the headman gave him an asylum for five days. During these days, however, he twice narrowly escaped death from sepoys prowling about the village. On the sixth he received information which led him to believe that his wife and her travelling companions were within six or seven miles of him. He hastened on, with swollen and blistered feet, wretched substitutes for raiment, and a frame nearly worn out by sickness and anxiety; but a gleam of joy burst upon him when at length he overtook the surgeon and the two wives, though dismayed to see the plight to which they had been reduced. The poor ladies he found to be, like himself, reft of everything they had in the world except a few torn and toil-worn fragments of garments. The surgeon had been less rudely stripped, simply because the clothes of a wounded man were less acceptable to the spoliators. The fugitives, now four in number, continued their journey, their feet pierced with thorns and sharp stones, and the difficulty of carrying or dragging a wounded man becoming greater and greater. The officer’s wife, having had no head-covering for many days, felt the sun’s heat to be gradually affecting her brain; she was thankful when a villager gave her a wet cloth to bind round her temples. Matters now began to mend; the villagers were less afraid of the Delhi sepoys; the vicinity of Kurnaul exhibited less violence and marauding; horses and mules were obtained on one day to take them to Lursowlie; and on the next a carriage was provided for their conveyance to Kurnaul. How they got on from Kurnaul to Umballa, and from Umballa to Simla, need not be told – the romance of the incident was over when the three fugitives, two women and a wounded man, were joined by a fourth; although much physical and mental suffering had still to be endured. The little son of this lady, it was afterwards found, had been carried by some friends safely to Meerut on the 12th. The four fugitives, when they reached friendly quarters, were poor indeed: no beggars could be more completely dependent on the sympathy of those whom they now happily met.
Next we will follow the steps of some of those who chose Meerut rather than Kurnaul as their place of refuge. Their adventures partake of a new interest, because there was a broad and swift river to be crossed. A young ensign of the 54th regiment, a stripling who had just commenced military service under the Company, had a sad tale to tell, how the European officers of his regiment had fallen almost to a man. He was in the cantonment when the news arrived of the approach of the Meerut mutineers; his regiment was ordered to hasten to the city; and he, like other officers, was fain to hope that the men would remain true to their colours. Leaving two companies to follow with two guns, the other eight marched off to the city, distant, as has already been stated, about two miles. Arriving at the mainguard of the Cashmere Gate, the regiment encountered the mutinous 3d Bengal cavalry, who immediately shot down nearly all the officers of the eight companies: the men of those companies shewing, by a refusal to defend their officers, that they were quite ready for revolt. The colonel, indeed, was bayoneted by one of his own men after a trooper had shot him. In about half an hour the other two companies arrived with the two guns; but as the few remaining officers of the regiment knew not which of their men, if any, could be depended on, they formed a kind of small fort or citadel of the mainguard, into which they brought their few remaining companions one by one. The poor youth, who had just commenced soldiering, and who had never seen a dead body, was nearly overwhelmed with grief at the sight of his brother-officers, with whom he had laughed and chatted a few hours before, lying side by side dead and mutilated. The main body of the regiment remained sullen, though not mutinous, until about five o’clock in the evening; but then the spirit of evil seemed to seize them, and they turned upon the Europeans near them, shooting indiscriminately. The scene became agonising. Many women and children had gone to the mainguard for security; and now they as well as the officers found it necessary to flee for very life. Some ran, leaped, clomb, until they got beyond the wall of the city; others waited to help those who were weaker or of more tender years. Some of the ladies, though wounded, lowered themselves by handkerchiefs into the ditch, from embrasures in the parapet, and were caught by officers below; and then ensued the terrible labour of dragging or carrying them up the counterscarp on the other side of the ditch. (A ditch, in military matters, be it remembered, is a dry, broad, very deep trench outside a fortified wall, with nearly vertical sides, called the scarp and counterscarp.) The young officer tells how that he and his male companions would have made a dash towards Meerut, sword in hand, or have sold their lives at once; but that their chief thoughts were now for the women and children. What were the privations of such a company as this, in fords and jungles, in hunger and nakedness, we shall presently see by means of a narrative from another quarter.