Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/368

 Extract from the journal of an officer in the 16th Lancers, at Cawnpore:—

"Aug. 20th.—A most savage and barbarous act was this day committed on our grand parade; several officers and numbers of sipahīs stood round and witnessed it. A Patān of high caste, and of such great muscular powers as to be a celebrated pehlwān or wrestler, was taken up on suspicion of theft. A barkandāz (native policeman) was sent with the prisoner to his house, that he might eat his dinner; the Patān endeavoured to enter his house, when the barkandāz struck him with his shoe on the mouth (the very grossest insult that can be offered to a native). The prisoner managed to get his hands loose, ran into a sword cutler's (sikligur's), snatched up the first sword that presented itself, and cut down the barkandāz. The Patān then ran through the city, crying, 'Now, who will take me?' When he got on the grand parade he halted, and when told that he could easily escape into the King of Oude's territories,—'for what is the Ganges for such a man as you to swim?'—he answered, 'No; I cannot live after the insult I have received; but I will teach those rascally barkandāz how to insult a Patān.' He was soon surrounded by numbers of the native police, variously armed, but he kept them all for a length of time at defiance; at last, after receiving a great many wounds, and with his left arm nearly severed, he fell, but still continued fighting desperately; a musket was now sent for, and the third shot killed this brave fellow. An officer, who stood by, and saw this brutal murder committed, told me the prisoner cut down and wounded eleven men, and received upwards of forty wounds. This outrage was committed in broad daylight, in front of the sipahī lines. An occurrence of this nature would, I think, make some little stir in England."

The same gentleman mentions, "The natives in the bazār and surrounding villages suffer shockingly from cholera, and you can scarcely go into any of the thoroughfares to the ghāts, without seeing several dead bodies being carried to the Ganges. Large groups of women, preceded by their noisy, inharmonious music, are at all hours proceeding towards the river, to offer up their