It was in vain the Government proclaimed that no unclean matters should be used in the cartridges issued to them; that they might grease their cartridges for themselves; that they would be allowed to tear off the ends instead of biting them, as was the way in those muzzle-loading days. The suspicion had taken so strong a hold that in more than one case the new ammunition was mutinously rejected. Religious and political agitators eagerly seized this chance of fomenting their own designs. A fable spread among the Sepoys that the English, determined to destroy their caste as a preliminary to forced conversion, had ground up cows' bones to mix with the flour supplied to them. At Lucknow, the simple incident of a regimental surgeon tasting a bottle of medicine had been enough to raise a tumult among men who were convinced that he thus designed to pollute the faith of their sick comrades. Our officers, hardly able to treat such tales seriously, were forced to pay heed to the spirit underlying them, which through the early months of 1857 displayed itself ominously in frequent incendiary fires at the various stations, the stealthy Oriental's first symptom of lawlessness. Still, few Englishmen estimated aright the gravity of the situation; and the Government failed in the prompt severity judged needful only after the event. Two mutineers were hanged;[1] two insubordinate regiments had been disbanded, to spread their seditious murmurs all over Bengal; but the danger was not fully realized till, like a thunderbolt, came news of the open outbreak at Meerut, forty miles from Delhi. The scenes of the Mutiny can ill be conceived without some description of an Indian "station." Usually the Cantonments lie two or three miles out of the native city, forming a town in themselves, the buildings widespread by the dusty _maidan_ that serves as a parade-ground. On one side will be the barracks of the European troops, the scattered bungalows of officers and civilians, each in its roomy "compound," the church, the treasury, and other public places. On the other lie the "lines," long rows of huts in which the Sepoys live after their own fashion with their wives and families, overlooked only by their staff of native officers, who bear fine titles and perform important duties, but with whom the youngest English subaltern scorns familiar comradeship. Between are a maze of bazaars, forming an always open market, and the crowded abodes of the camp-followers who swarm about an Indian army.