Seven companies of the Thirty-fourth regiment were disbanded, after all pecuniary claims had been discharged. The closing effect was dramatic enough. General Hearsey made the men a spirited harangue, reminding them of their misdeeds, and giving some hints as to their future conduct which they would have done well to have laid to heart. Then came the parting; not without tears, it is said, on both sides. The sepoys stripped off their accoutrements, and were ferried across the river, bag and baggage, in Government steamers, and there sent about their business. In order to disprove the report that the Company had designs against their religion, they were informed that every facility would be afforded them for visiting Hindoo shrines of repute before they bent their steps towards their villages in Oude and Bahar. Unfortunately for themselves, the men of the two regiments broken up at Barrackpore were bent upon doing a far less innocent service to the cause of their faith than that of feeing, out of the arrears of their pay, the priests of Juggernauth and Gyah. The most active and determined among their number deliberately proceeded to spread over the whole continent of India the tidings of the late occurrences, told with more than Oriental exaggeration, and received with more than Oriental credulity. No society of rich and civilized Christians, who ever undertook to preach the gospel of peace and good-will, can have employed a more perfect system of organization than was adopted by these rascals, whose mission it was to preach the gospel of sedition and slaughter. By twos and threes, in various disguises, and on divers pretexts, they found their way to every native regiment in the three Presidencies. Wherever they went they related how the Queen of England had commanded that the Hindoos and Mussulmans of India should be made Christians, come what might; how the Governor-General, the Great Lord Sahib, had remonstrated with her, saying that he must first slay three hundred thousand holy and learned men of both religions; how the Queen had rejoined, "Let it then be done"; how the Great Lord Sahib had resolved to begin with the army, and had ordered the troops to bite cartridges smeared with the fat of cow and pig; how the sepoys at Barrackpore had bravely resisted the tyrannous and accursed mandate; how some had testified to the death, and some had suffered bonds and scourging, and all had been deprived of their rank and calling, and robbed of the pensions which they had earned by valour and fidelity and ancient service. Then their hearers were warned that a like fate was in store for all; that a strenuous and united effort could alone save their freedom and their religion; and that the hour was fast approaching when the Brahmins of the army must rule, or be for ever slaves and Christians. Sometimes, it was a couple of fakeers perched on an elephant; sometimes, a party of country-people on their way