made into a table, and that a child can sleep as well in a basket or in an old box as on a mahogany bedstead. So our “picnic” fashion of life in Almorah gave us little concern, any inconveniences being amply balanced by the reflection that thirty miles more of mountains lay between our precious charge and danger.
Our worthy Commissioner, after a time, unable to endure longer this “hunger for news” that was consuming us, organized a post department of his own, and by relays of Paharees, stretching along the crest of the Himalayas, for what is usually seventeen days' journey to Mussoorie, above Dehra Doon, managed to reach on to beyond the immediate circle of Sepoy power and establish communication with the Europeans there, who were able to correspond with the Punjab, and obtain such news as was available from that quarter.
Information of our whereabouts and safety now got abroad, and worked its way around by the sea-coast to Calcutta. The 13th of August was a joyful day. To our delight and astonishment, the Paharee postman that morning brought us three numbers of the Christian Advocate, and three of Zion's Herald, for the month of April! The postmaster at Bombay had found us out, and commenced sending us a mail whenever he had the chance, via Kurrachee, Lahore, and Mussoorie. So we now began to receive papers and letters with more or less regularity. Only those who have been, as we were, shut up for three months and a half without a letter or a paper or a word from home, can imagine the joy with which we grasped the precious documents, and sat down to devour their contents. It was almost like life from the dead!
But, while grateful for news at last, what horrible accounts of massacre and pillage poured in upon us—frightful details of what had occurred! How truly we realized, as we heard or read them. the reality of the lines—
“My ear is pained,
My soul is sick, with every day's report
Of wrong and outrage.”
At our family altar, and in our closet, our cry was, “O Lord, how long.” Nor was the suffering and wretchedness limited to the
