Of course our mails were cut off—we were completely isolated from all the world. We could stand on our magnificent elevation and look out upon the plains of India, the horizon stretching for a hundred miles from east to west—could trace the courses of the rivers, and see the forests and towns in the dim distance—but could only imagine what was being done down there. The handful of villagers around us told us that we were the last of Christian life left in India; that from where we stood to the sea, nearly a thousand miles on each side, every white man had been murdered, and the last vestige of our religion swept away. We well knew if this were so our fate was but a question of time; yet “against hope” I “believed in hope.” I felt that this could not be true, for Jesus Christ was still on the throne which governs this world, and he would not thus allow the clock of progress to be put back for centuries, nor yield to earth or hell the conquests won on the oriental hemisphere.
Our “raging foes” kept up their alarms, but we estimated them at their worth, and stood on our guard day and night with unrelaxed vigilance. How we longed for news! A letter or a newspaper would have been more precious than rubies; but we were destined to know for weary months what “hunger for news” meant. Our food was often scanty; but we would willingly have done without it, even for days, to have received instead a feast of information, more particularly about those whom we left below, and of whose fate we were so uncertain.
We tried hard to establish some means of communication, but they were all failures. The few natives that remained faithful were offered the largest bribes which our means afforded, to go down and bring us news of how matters stood—whether any of our friends survived, and if there was any prospect of relief. Four or five were induced to go, but only one returned, and he was mutilated. The rebels cut off his nose and ears, and the poor man was a frightful spectacle. Government afterward liberally pensioned him. We were indeed “shut up;” life hung in uncertainty, and we “stood in jeopardy every hour.” The outside world lost
