market. The Chandnee Chowk, with a few of its leading tributaries toward the Palace, (inside the walls of which were the troops and the prisoners,) were the only portions of Delhi where I met any number of people. The rest of the city was a desert, where one might walk half a mile and not meet a human being, even at midday. Coming around to the Kotwalie, an awful sight presented itself. On a high gallows (which the darkness prevented me from seeing when I stood there a few hours before) were hanging by the neck, dead, eighteen of the “Shahzadas”—the king's seed—who had been found guilty of terrible crimes, many of them committed at this very place. They had been hanged at daybreak, and only a few persons were standing around.
I had, of course, heard the report of their fiendish deeds, but to come thus suddenly upon the authors of them, bearing their penalty on the very spot where their crimes were committed, was enough to chill the blood in one's veins. How dreadful is sin! The sight made me sick, and I turned hastily away.
During the day we called upon Lieutenant E., a military friend, who kindly gratified our wishes to be shown “the sights.” Mounting us on one of the government elephants, he took us over the battle-field, and described the siege and the assault, and the capture of the city at the different points. We lingered where General Wilson stood when the terrible assault was made, and seemed to realize the whole scene. It is doubtful if any commander in modern times has sustained a weightier responsibility than he did then.
Further delay was impossible; there was no room for any reverse. He must succeed or all was lost. A repulse would have involved consequences so terrible that the mind dare hardly contemplate them. If he failed, that little army, without a miracle, must have been annihilated, the wavering Punjab would have “gone,” and the undecided princes have been drawn into the current, which would probably, within a few weeks, have swept away every thing British and Christian from the soil of India.
We wandered over the battle-field, by the broad shore of the
