Camps, Quarters, and Casual PlacesForbes, Archibald
History
Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Forbes, Archibald
Military camps; Military history, Modern
"Onao!" shouts the conductor of the train at the first station from
Cawnpore, and we look out on a few railway bungalows and a large native
village apparently in a ruinous state. All this journey is studded with
battlefields, and this is one of them. If I had time I should like to
make a pilgrimage to the street mouth into which dashed frantically
Private Patrick Cavanagh of the 64th, who, stung to madness by the
hesitation of his fellows, was cut to pieces by the tulwars of the
mutineers. We jog on very slowly; the Oude and Rohilcund Railway is to
India in point of slowness what the Great Eastern used to be to us at
home; but every yard of the ground is interesting. Along that high road
passed in long, strangely diversified procession the people whom Clyde
brought away from Lucknow--the civilians, the women, the children, and
the wounded of the immortal garrison. That swell beyond the mango trees
under which the _nhil gau_ are feeding, is Mungalwar, Havelock's
menacing position. No wonder though the outskirts of this town on the
high road present a ruined appearance. It is Busseerutgunge, the scene
of three of Havelock's battles and victories, fought and won in a
single fortnight. We pass Bunnee, where Havelock and Outram tramping on
to the relief, fired a royal salute in the hope that the sound of it
might reach to the Residency and cheer the hearts of its garrison. And
now we are on the platform of the Lucknow station which has more of an
English look about it than have most Indian stations. There is a
bookstall, although it is not one of Smith's; and there are lots of
English faces in the crowd waiting the arrival of the train. The
natives, one sees at a glance, are of very different physique from the
people of Bengal. The Oude man is tall, square-shouldered, and upright;
he has more hair on his face than has the Bengali, and his carriage is
that of a free man. The railway station of Lucknow is flanked by two
earthwork fortifications of considerable pretensions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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