while that of the ryots was negligible; though it must be remembered that the peasantry as a whole gave no assistance to the mutineers. To all these causes must be added--not least important in dealing with orientals--the widespread feeling since the Afghan disaster that the star of the company was in the descendant, and that there was truth in the old prophecy that the British would rule in India for a bare century from Plassey (1757). Bazaar rumours of British reverses in the Crimea and in Persia increased the temptations for a general rising against the dominant race. The greased cartridges. To this accumulation of inflammatory materials a spark was put in 1857 by an act of almost incredible folly on the part of the military authorities in India. The introduction of the Minié rifle, with its greased cartridges, was accompanied by no consideration of the religious prejudices of the Bengal sepoys, to whom, whether Hindus or Mahommedans, the fat of cows and pigs was anathema. It was easy for agitators to persuade the sepoys that the new cartridges were greased with the fat of animals sacred to one creed or forbidden to another, and that the British government was thus engaged in a deep-laid plot for forcing them to become Christians by first making them outcasts from their own religions. The growth of missionary enterprise in India lent colour to this theory, which was supported by the fact that no precautions had been taken to grease the Indian cartridges with a neutral fat, such as that of sheep and goats. The researches of Mr G. W. Forrest in the Indian government records have shown that the sepoys' fears of defilement by biting the new cartridges had a considerable foundation in fact. At a court-martial in 1857 Colonel Abbott, inspector general of ordnance, gave evidence that "the tallow might or might not have contained the fat of cows." No attempt, in fact, had been made to exclude the fat of cows and pigs, and apparently no one had realized that a gross outrage was thus being perpetrated on the religious feelings of both Hindu and Mahommedan sepoys. The low-caste natives employed in the arsenals knew what grease was actually being employed, and taunted the Brahman sepoys with the loss of caste that would follow their use of the new cartridges. Refusals to accept the suspected cartridges were soon heard in the Bengal army. The numerous agitators who had their own reasons for fomenting mutiny rose to the occasion, and In the first months of 1857 the greater part of the Bengal presidency was seething with sedition. At this time took place the mysterious distribution of chapatis, small cakes of unleavened bread, which had previously been known in connexion with the mutiny at Vellore (1806). "From village to village, from district to district, through hill-land and lowland, the signal--unexplained at the time, inexplicable still--sped; and in village after village, in district after district,