my right thigh. We were just on the move, hoping to come into action with some Oude rebels, and I was in agony—unable to move a step—so I was placed in a litter and carried along with the sick of the headquarters staff into Rohilcund. Small-pox broke out at Lucknow, and clung to us on the march, and among the sick were Sir W. Peel (he died at Cawnpore), Sir David Baird, and Major Alison. On the 25th March, 1858, the battle of Bareilly was fought. Our coolie bearers had carried the sick litters into a shady tope or grove of trees—the sun was fierce. There I lay, helpless, listening to the sound of battle close at hand. My only clothing consisted of a shirt. Suddenly a cry burst from the camp followers:—
"'The Sowars are coming! The Sowars are coming!'
"Our Syces ran up with the chargers. How I did it, I do not know. But I hopped out of my litter and scrambled up into the saddle—the flaps felt like molten iron, and the blister on my leg rolled up against the leather roasted by the sun outside the tope—on my horse. My servant—a very brave fellow—held on by the stirrup leather, flogging the horse, for I had only bare feet and bare legs. Suddenly he let go. He saw a Sowar making for us, and he released his hold so as not to impede my flight. He was cut down, I presume; for I never saw him again—and his wages were due. I struggled on, but the sun was more powerful than I. I had only proceeded a few yards when I fell off my horse insensible—with sunstroke.
"Then I heard a voice.
"'Look—a white man!"
"It was some of our people, thank God! They thought I had been killed, and that the Sowars had stripped off my clothing, for I was naked, all save my shirt, and it was bloody. They bent over me. "'He's warm,' cried one of the men—it was Tombs' battery that had come up. I got back to camp, but I was very near the point of death; and, indeed, I had the unique and unpleasant trial of listening to my good friends and physicians, Tice and Mackinnon, discussing the question of my burial at the foot of the charpoy, on which I was stretched, apparently dead."
Such is one of the experiences of Dr. Russell during the Indian Mutiny.
Dr. Russell: or, the troubles of a war correspondent.
(A Sketch by Col. Colville.)
Yet another Christmas Day (1858) was spent in India on the borders of Nepaul. The day dawned upon an anxious people, but it was Christmas, and the war correspondent, with a party of friends, meant to keep it up. They gathered for dinner in a large mess tent, from the ridge pole of which hung well-known Scotch suggested a Highland fling as an appropriate finish. The gallant Highlander got on the table, and his tripping was so vigorous that it shook down the lamp. In two minutes. the tent was in flames. So ended another Christmas Day.
In 1859 Dr. Russell returned to England, and received the Indian War Medal with the Lucknow clasp. In 1860 he started the Army and Navy Gazette, of which he is still part proprietor and editor, and in 1861 went to the United States, in time to hear Mr. Lincoln deliver the Inaugural Address at Washington, which was accepted as a proclamation of war against their "domestic institutions" by the Southern States. He was exceedingly well received, and sat down at Lincoln's first official dinner in the White House, being the only person not there who was a Cabinet
