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82 formed at three stations: Dumdum, a cantonment in the neighbourhood of Calcutta; Ambála and Siálkot, at the foot of the Himálaya in Upper India. Large numbers of cartridges for the new rifle had been manufactured at Fort William in Calcutta, and sent up country for use at the two northern depôts. Another supply had been manufactured at Meerut, the headquarters of the Bengal Artillery. None had, however, as yet been issued to the troops. A chance altercation between a high-caste Sepoy and and a low-caste employé at Dumdum brought to light the astounding fact that the material used in lubricating the new cartridge consisted partially of the fat of cows and pigs, a substance which neither Hindu nor Muhammadan could touch without pollution. The story spread like wild-fire. It became at once the topic of the Sepoy's talk at the neighbouring cantonment of Barrackpur, where four native regiments were quartered. The Sepoys were seriously alarmed; and the Sepoys were a body so constituted that a sentiment, felt acutely by any of its members, flashed through the entire body with the swiftness and force of an electric shock. There is reason to believe that, before Lord Canning's day, the native soldiers of Upper India were haunted by the idea that the Government contemplated their conversion to Christianity by the summary process of rendering them outcasts from their own religion. In the first days of trouble at Lucknow a Bráhman officer of high standing assured Sir H. Lawrence that for ten years