no drugs, or cordials, or opiates to cure or alleviate. The bandages for the newly wounded were supplied off the persons of the ladies, who nobly parted with their clothing for this purpose, till many of them had barely enough left to screen their persons. And to this condition were these once beautiful women reduced—herded together in fetid misery, where delicacy and modesty were hourly shocked, though never for a moment impaired. Bare-footed and ragged, haggard and emaciated, parched with drought and faint with hunger, they sat watching to hear that they were widows. Each morning deepened the hollow in the youngest cheek, and added a new furrow to the fairest brow. Want, exposure, and depression speedily decimated that hapless company, while a hideous train of diseases—fever, apoplexy, insanity, cholera, and dysentery—began to add their horrors to the dreadful and unparalleled scene. Alas! even this does not by any means exhaust the list of terrors, but we can go no further. American ladies will add their generous tears to those which have been flowing for their sorrows in many an English home during the past few years.
They tried hard to communicate with the outside world—with Lucknow or Allahabad—for they had a few faithful natives who ventured forth for them; but so close were the cavalry pickets around their position that only one person ever returned to them. These spies were barbarously used. The writer saw some of them after the Rebellion in their mutilated state—their hands cut off, or their noses split open; and one poor fellow had lost hands, nose, and ears. The native mode of mutilation was horribly painful, the limb being sometimes chopped off with a tulwar—a coarse sword—and the stump dipped in boiling oil to arrest the bleeding.
Events had now reached their dire extremity. The sweetness of existence had vanished, and the last flicker of hope had died away. Yet, moved by a generous despair and an invincible selfrespect, they still fought on for dear life, and for lives dearer than their own. By daring, and vigilance, and unparalleled endurance, these brave and suffering men staved off ruin for another day, and yet another. Long had their eyes and ears strained in the direction
