This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
LUCKNOW
181

nor the route of Campbell's advance. "Will the memsahib not even see the Secunderabad?" wailed the guide when we refused to look into that slaughter-pen, where sixteen hundred and forty sepoys, fleeing from the Highlanders, were bayoneted in a cul-de-sac. Even Lord Roberts has said that that surging heap of dead and dying, more than shoulder high against the wall, was an incident of war that sickened men bent on avenging the atrocities of Cawnpore.

We saw with interest the great Mohammedan Imambara, the arches of its court framing pictures of other domes and minarets, its mihrab pointing westward to Mecca, and its deep baoli, or well, with encircling marble galleries where it is always cool in summer. The clock-tower, the white mosque filled with mirrors like a Champs-Elysées café, and the old palace of the kings of Oudh hung with portraits of those flabby and ill-favored royalties, were tedious stock sights. We saw with far more interest the latest American magazines lying on the table of the United Service Club, which now occupies the old Umbrella House of the nawab, an important place during the siege.

Although it was a real city of palaces long before the Mutiny, and a larger place then than Calcutta or Bombay, the bazaars of this old native capital were not so very interesting; and, except in the silver bazaar, a plague of torpid flies tormented us. The perfume-shops were countless, and we sniffed gums, grasses, woods, and attars of all the flowers, until we could not tell the precious rose attar, that sells at