goaded with vindictive animosity, spread themselves over the length and breadth of the country, and on the way to their homes diligently proclaimed the immediate advent of evil times. Moreover, they took care, not only to exaggerate the state of things at the military stations from whence they had come, but to substantiate, as it were, the wild and seditious stories which were already implicitly believed by a vast community of the people.
All this while no Englishman in the Bengal Presidency would have believed that he, and his fellow-countrymen, were standing on a volcano about to engulf them within its flames. On the contrary, before the crack of doom was heard in Upper India, confidence and trust in the natives was felt to such an extent that all Europeans — men, women, and even children — travelled over the country without the slightest hesitation or fear; and wherever they went the people always greeted them most kindly, and with the greatest respect. Nor did the Government itself realise so grave a crisis as the near approach of a sanguinary and disastrous revolution; though it apparently seemed to hope that, in the extinction of the two mutinous regiments, the clouds which over-shadowed and darkened the Empire would soon pass away. And, doubtless, it was under the bane of this fatal infatuation, that a whole catalogue of melancholy blunders occurred at the commencement of the Mutiny.
Unfortunately that great, good man. Lord Canning,
