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Rh typical Hindu is quiet, industrious, and tolerant in religious matters unless provoked to excitement. As a soldier he is obedient and patient, although warped by those caste prejudices which have always given the Bráhmans special control over comrades and subordinates. These qualities were strongly marked in the mutinous Sepoys. The Muhammadan, on his part, is by nature restless, fanatical, and ready for any adventure that may come to hand. In Northern India he is, as a rule, a born soldier, and even in the South he still retains in some measure the martial instincts which inspired his forefathers.

Such, briefly, were the characteristics of the people with whom the British Government and its administrators in the India of thirty-four years ago had to deal. They laboured under the disadvantage of being separated from those people by blood, religion, and character, and had therefore to contend with the almost insuperable difficulty of ignorance as to the undercurrents of public feeling. To obtain trustworthy information from the natives was in fact all but impossible, while the motives of the governing power were as constantly liable to be misunderstood and misrepresented by conquered races.

It cannot be said that the storm burst without warning. Months before the actual outbreak of the mutinous Sepoys, an idea had taken hold of a large number of persons within range of Hindu and Muhammadan influence that a crisis in the world's history was near at hand, that great events were impending,