s house, while Nicholson came to our mess. He too
pointed out to us the importance of preventing the news from getting
about and of keeping it as long as possible from the Native soldiers.

We had at Peshawar three regiments of Native Cavalry and five of
Native Infantry, not less than 5,000 men, while the strength of the
two British regiments and the Artillery did not exceed 2,000. This
European force was more than sufficient to cope with the eight Native
corps, but in the event of any general disturbance amongst the Native
troops, we had to calculate on the probability of their being joined
by the 50,000 inhabitants of the city, and, indeed, by the entire
population of the Peshawar valley; not to speak of the tribes all
along the border, who were sure to rise.

It was an occasion for the gravest anxiety, and the delay of even a
few hours in the sepoys becoming aware of the disastrous occurrences
at Meerut and Delhi meant a great deal to us.

Fortunately for India, there were good men and true at Peshawar in
those days, when hesitation and irresolution would have been
fatal, and it is worthy of note that they were comparatively young
men--Edwardes was thirty-seven, Nicholson thirty-five; Neville
Chamberlain, the distinguished Commandant of the Punjab Frontier Force
(who was hastily summoned from Kohat, where he happened to be on his
tour of inspection), was thirty-seven; and the Brigadier, Sydney
Cotton, though much older, being sixty-five, was not only
exceptionally young for his years and full of energy and intelligence,
but actually much younger than the average of General officers
commanding stations in India.

At once, on hearing of the Mutiny, Edwardes, acting in unison with
Nicholson, sent to the post-office and laid hands on all Native
correspondence; the letters they thus secured showed but too plainly
how necessary was this precaution. The number of seditious papers
seized was alarmingly great; they were for the most part couched in
figurative and enigmatical language, but it was quite sufficiently
clear from them that every Native regiment in the garrison was more or
less implicated and prepared to join the rebel movement.

A strong interest attaches to these letters, for they brought to light
the true feeling of the Natives towards us at the time, and it was
evident from them that the sepoys had really been made to believe that
we intended to destroy their caste by various unholy devices, of
which the