Soon after daybreak on Friday the seventeenth July, the English van was marching across the desolate plain which lay to southward of the city. Already the magical effect of the tropical rain had clothed that expanse of parched and dusty soil with luxuriant grass, in which rustled the feet of our soldiers as they pushed along, now stumbling over a hidden cannon-ball, and now kicking up the fragments of a sepoy skeleton. They traversed the deserted line of rebel posts, and halted beneath the walls of the roofless barracks, pitted with shot and blackened with flame, and beside the grave at whose mouth are scattered the bones of our people, as when one cutteth and cleaveth wood upon the earth. Three Fridays back from that very morning the treaty of surrender was being attested by a faithless signature, and sworn to with perfidious vows: and again at a like interval of time the men of the Second Cavalry were firing their stables, and saddling their horses, and buckling on the swords that were to be fleshed in unmanly strife. So much had been done and endured within a period of six weeks and a space of six miles. "At half past six A.M." writes Nanukchund, "the British force arrived in cantonments outside the city. Those of the citizens who were well-wishers to the Government brought them bread, butter, and milk. A great crowd of the town's people assembled to see what was going on. I also, who had not stepped out of my house for a month and a half for fear of being murdered, now came out and went to cantonments. Generals Havelock and Neill, and a number of other officers, were standing there. Fruiterers, milkmen, buttermen, bakers, and other sellers of provisions, were in attendance with their dollies. Those who were aware of what was coming had made preparations on the night previous by having provisions cooked in the bazaar. A little after eight the rebels who had mined the magazine set fire to the powder, and fled. The report of the explosion was so terrific, that the doors of city-houses fell off their hinges."