In the harem of the Nizam, at Hyderabad, there was, so lately as the time of the Mutiny, a regiment of Amazons who wore scarlet tunics, green trousers, and red cloth hats, trimmed with gold lace and mounted with a green plume. Their arms were the customary musket and bayonet. Whenever a distinguished foreigner visited the Palace, the female guard received him with military honours. "The extreme youth, and delicate appearance of these interesting warriors," says Prince Soltykoff, "at once attracted attention." Though, despite these feminine attractions, he says their aspect was so decidedly military, he would never have known they were females but for their long hair and the fulness of their bosoms. Their hair was tied in a knot, though in place of concealing it under their caps, they let it fall over the collar of their tunics. An interesting sketch of the female sepoys at Lucknow is given in the "Private Life of an Eastern King." "Of the living curiosities of the Palace, there were none the account of which will appear more strange to European ears than the female sepoys. I had seen these men-like women pacing up and down before the various entrances to the female apartments for many days before I was informed of their real character. I regarded them simply as a diminutive race of soldiers with well wadded coats. There was nothing but that fulness of the chest to distinguish many of them from other sepoys; and one is so accustomed to see soldiers in England with coats stuffed so as to make their wearers resemble pouter-pigeons, that I took little heed of the circumstance. "These women retained their long hair, which they tied up in a knot on the top of the head, and there it was concealed by the usual shako. They bore the ordinary accoutrements of sepoys in India--the musket and bayonet, cross-belts and cartridge-boxes, jackets and white duck continuations, which might be seen anywhere in Bengal. Intended solely for duty in the Palace as guardians of the harem, they were paraded only in the court-yards, where I have seen them going through their exercise just like other sepoys. They were drilled by one of the native officers of the king's army, and appeared quite familiar with marching and wheeling, with presenting, loading, and firing muskets, with the fixing and unfixing of bayonets; in fact, with all the detail of the ordinary barrack-yard. Whether they could have gone through the same marches in the field with thousands of mustachioed sepoys around them, I cannot tell--probably not. They had their own corporals and sergeants; none of them, I believe, attained a higher rank than that of sergeant.