five weeks before—gates that had been closed by Mohammedan bigotry against Christianity for ages. Her success on this expedition would have closed them again indefinitely, and I should have had to go elsewhere; but He whose holy providence guided my steps took care of the issues. She failed, and I succeeded, yet not without “a great fight of afflictions,” as the sequel will show.
We landed at Calcutta on the 23d of September, and were most cordially welcomed by the missionary brethren there, and aided by their opinions and advice in regard to the unoccupied territory of the country. We soon realized, in the brotherly kindness of their intercourse, and the gladness with which they regarded the incoming of another mission, what real evangelical union, and what freedom from sectarianism, exist among Christians in a heathen land. Dr. Duff was especially kind to us. He seemed so thankful that the Lord was sending more help to redeem the India he loved so well, and for which he had labored so long and so faithfully. As we parted from the great and good man, I little imagined that within a year, counting us among the slain, he would write a sort of biography of me, (in his work “The Indian Rebellion,”) or that I should live to thank him, at his own table, for the peculiar privilege of knowing what my friends would say of me when I was dead. Yet so it proved.
Proceeding at once up the country, we reached the city of Agra, the seat of government for the North-west, and soon realized that we were now amid the splendid evidences of the power and glory of the “Great Moguls.” This imperial city, and the adjoining one of Delhi, were full of those reminiscences, and the interest which they at once awakened was something intense and peculiar.
We were in blissful ignorance of any cause for anxiety—knew not what a volcano of wrath was quietly preparing beneath our feet, or how surely the titled and decorated “Nawabs,” whose courteous salaams we returned, were thirsting for our blood, and resolving to have it, too; but we will let that subject rest here, until we share with the reader our interest and delight as we survey some of those magnificent, those matchless, monuments of Patan skill
