pre-arranged route at once passed along the line; but as suspicious tidings of disaffection among the Sepoys at Deoghur had reached Raneegung before our departure from thence, we did not receive any very unlooked-for communication when it was told us that the garrison had mutinied at that outlandish cantonment.
A lightly equipped column — formed of European infantry and ourselves — soon therefore entered that wild and uninteresting country of the aboriginal Sonthals, who, although their homes lay in so isolated and apparently tiger-haunted a region, seemed happy and contented with their lot. From stage to stage they cheerfully supplied the Commissariat with ample provisions, and this was all the more surprising as for days together we traversed almost barren hills and dense jungles. Nevertheless the lowlands were exceedingly fertile, while horned cattle and sheep and domestic poultry appeared abundant in many of the villages through which we passed.
The column having at length threaded its way through a considerable portion of this savage-looking country, gained a breakneck road leading to a plateau on which the station of Deoghur stood. And here, for the first time, we beheld and bore witness to the influence of the appalling whirlwind of desolation that was passing over India.
Deoghur itself lay enwrapped in sepulchral silence of death, and all that was once the military cantonments in ruins and ashes; while in a well-kept garden
