Camps, Quarters, and Casual PlacesForbes, Archibald
History
Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places
Forbes, Archibald
Military camps; Military history, Modern
gray walls shivered with shot and shored up here and there by beams.
The rooms of the Begum Kothi near the centre of the position, are still
laterally entire but roofless. The walls of this structure are
exceptionally thick and here many of the ladies of the garrison were
quartered. All around the Residency position the native houses which at
the time of the siege crowded close up on the intrenchment, are now
destroyed; and indeed the native town has been curtailed into
comparatively small dimensions and is entirely separated from the area
in which the houses of the station are built.
Quitting the Residency I drive westward by the river side, over the
site of the Captan Bazaar, past also that huge fortified heap the
Muchee Bawn, till I reach the beautiful enclosure in which the great
Imambara stands. This majestic structure--part temple, part convent,
part palace, and now part fortress--dominates the whole _terrain_, and
from its lofty flat roof one looks down on the plain where the weekly
_hât_ or market is being held, on the gardens and mansions across the
river, and southward upon the dense mass of houses which constitute the
native city. Sentries promenade the battlements of the Muchee Bawn, and
the Imambara--an apartment to which for space and height I know none in
Europe comparable--is now used as an arsenal, where are stored the
great siege guns which William Peel plied with so great skill and
gallantry. Just outside the Imambara, on the edge of the _maidan_
between it and the Moosabagh, I come on a little railed churchyard
where rest a few British soldiers who fell during Lord Clyde's final
operations in this direction. Then, with a sweep across the plain to
the south and by a slight ascent, I reach the gate of the city which
opens into the Chowk or principal street--the street traversed in
disguise by the dauntless Kavanagh when he went out from the garrison
to convey information and afford guidance to Sir Colin Campbell on his
first advance. The gatehouse is held by a strong force of native
policemen, armed as if they were soldiers; and as I pass the guard I
stand in the Chowk itself, in the midst of a throng of gaily clad male
pedestrians, women in chintz trousers, laden donkeys, multitudinous
children, and still more multitudinous stinks. All down both sides the
fronts of the lower stories are open, and in the recesses sit merchants
displaying paltry jewelry, slippers, pipes, turban cloths, and
Manchester stuffs of the gaudiest patterns. The main street of Lucknow
has been called "The Street of Silver," but I could find little among
its jewelry either of silver or of gold. The first floors all have
balconies, and on these sit draped, barefooted women of Rahab's
profession. The women of Lucknow are fairer and handsomer, and the men
bolder and more stalwart, than those in Bengal, and it takes no great
penetration to discern that Lucknow is still ruled by fear and not by
love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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