mount the elephant usually employed on such ghastly occasions; this they did with alacrity, and their arms being unpinioned they helped to adjust the nooses in the cords round their own necks; then the elephant by “command” of its keeper moved off, and left the trio suspended to the branches in dying agony, until death — by strangulation — relieved their sufferings. In ordinary times such scenes would have chilled the blood of the living, but now men who had never perhaps in the whole course of their lives witnessed the execution of a human being were actually superintending, with a sort of superhuman calmness, the “surroundings” of a common hangman. Such, alas! is the eventful epoch we live in, and in which there is no alternative.
27th. — Weather charming; the air mild, the sky clear, and of the loveliest turquoise blue — Mars and Ceres appear in strange fellowship at Amorah. A boundless and rolling carpet of rich crops lies spread out before us on every side, but not a living form is seen lingering about the pleasant landscape. Heavy firing at intervals on the Oudh frontier. Every horse saddled; every man accoutred and on the alert. Sent off a spy to the rebel camp at Belwa. He is, I am told, a desperate scoundrel; but as at the risk of his life he proved himself faithful to us on a former occasion, he was again allowed to venture into the enemy's lines.
As I sit conversing with a chum under the protruding outer fly of our tent, overlooking the main
