CHAPTER VI.
THE CAWNPORE MASSACRE AND THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.
WHILE we were thus maintaining, as best we could, our position against fearful odds, and hoping for that relief which had yet, for the reasons following, to be so much longer delayed, our fellow Christians down in the plains below us were passing through sorrows and agonies in the presence of which our trials were not worthy to be mentioned, and the accounts of which were about to fill the civilized world with horror.
With a sad heart we tell the story of Cawnpore—the “city of melancholy fame”— and present to our readers that wonderful record of fruitless valor and unutterable woe which was there exhibited. Fourteen years have passed over since these deeds were done, but the fearful record of them will be read with deepest interest by Christian men and women long after the present generation has passed away. This story can never die. Wherever and whenever read, it should be remembered that England alone did not suffer there. The dire agony of Cawnpore was shared by American gentlemen and ladies; indeed, they took precedence in these sorrows, for the group first “led as sheep to the slaughter,” before the murder of those from the intrenchment was perpetrated, included the Rev. Messrs. Freeman, Johnson, M’Mullin, and Campbell, with their dear wives and children, from Futtyghur—the very next station to the one then occupied by the writer, who, with his family, had to conclude whether to accept the invitation to join this party, and attempt escape by the Ganges, or else “flee to the mountains” on the north. He decided for the latter, and thus narrowly escaped the fate which befell these brethren and sisters, whom he had already learned to esteem so highly for their own and for their work's sake.
