On the following day we opened our batteries on some stockades on the face of the hill intervening between us and the fort of Muckwanpore. The first stockade that we proposed to dislodge, was one about eight hundred or a thousand yards from our battery. We could not approach nearer than this, as a deep and enormous declivity lay between us. This being the case, we were under the necessity of commencing at this great distance. The stockade seemed alive with men. There was also a tent pitched in it, with several colours flying, in token of defiance. Some dozen shells, which were beautifully thrown into this stockade, put some of them to double-quick; the tent soon disappeared, as well as the colours, and most of the men, save now and then one or two taking a sly peep to see what we were about. The eighteen and twenty-four pound balls, however, I am convinced never had power to penetrate that little edifice of art. It was evidently built of green bamboos. These, when green, are very elastic, and, being interwoven, as this stockade seemed to be, there is no question that, at the distance from which we fired, they would resist the power of our balls. We frequently saw men running and picking up something, a hundred yards or more from the place. We could not suppose that they were picking up stones. In the course of this day we received a communication to admit into camp a native from the fort, with his attendants, six in number. "Halloa," said one, "what! they have had a sickener, have they?"--"They have had enough on't," said another. A soldier standing near me bellowed out, "Arrah, Corporal Freeman, dear, sure the enemy have got the Corporal Forbes" (meaning the cholera morbus), "for the rajah is coming to take _ta_ with Sir David Maloney." This was what our men had christened him, I suppose to make his name shorter. Various were the reports in circulation, and every one had his own opinion. Here again the glass of the noble captain, of whom I have already made honourable mention, was constantly at his eye, looking for this messenger of peace. Sometimes he saw him on horseback; then in his palanquin, attended by one hundred followers. "If he was the commander-in-chief, he would not permit one of them to come within a mile of the camp, armed." One time he saw the rajah riding on a milk-white steed on the hill; but this procession, unfortunately, proved to be no other than little white clouds riding in the sky. Ten thousand were the methods and styles in which this messenger was to make his appearance, and not one was right, for he arrived carried in something like a sailor's hammock, with one follower. He was a dirty, ill-looking, thick-set fellow, with small eyes, wide face, and a low forehead. In spite of these disadvantages of person, however, he assumed all the consequence of a nabob; but when we commenced examining his hammock and person, to see that he had no hidden weapon, his ambassadorship was highly offended, and protested that, to