t occupied with a narrative of the exhibition of a mutinous
spirit which appeared in 1849 in some thirty Sepoy battalions, in
regard to a reduction of their pay, and of the means taken to check
and subdue it. On the third page is a sentence which read now is of
terrible import: "Mutiny with [among?] the Sepoys is the _most_
formidable danger menacing our Indian empire." And a few pages farther
on occurs the following striking passage: "The ablest and most
experienced civil and military servants of the East India Company
consider mutiny as one of the greatest, if not _the_ greatest danger
threatening India,--a danger also that may come unexpectedly, and, if
the first symptoms be not carefully treated, with a power to shake
Leadenhall."

The anticipated mutiny has now come, its first symptoms were treated
with utter want of judgment, and its power is shaking the whole fabric
of the English rule in India.

One day toward the end of January last, a workman employed in the
magazine at Barrackpore, an important station about seventeen miles
from Calcutta, stopped to ask a Sepoy for some water from his
drinking-vessel. Being refused, because he was of low caste, and his
touch would defile the vessel, he said, with a sneer, "What caste are
you of, who bite pig's grease and cow's fat on your cartridges?"
Practice with the new Enfield rifle had just been introduced, and the
cartridges were greased for use in order not to foul the gun. The
rumor spread among the Sepoys that there was a trick played upon
them,--that this was but a device to pollute them and destroy their
caste, and the first step toward a general and forcible conversion of
the soldiers to Christianity. The groundlessness of the idea upon
which this alarm was founded afforded no hindrance to its ready
reception, nor was the absurdity of the design attributed to the
ruling powers apparent to the obscured and timid intellect of the
Sepoys. The consequences of loss of caste are so feared,--and are in
reality of so trying a nature,--that upon this point the sensitiveness
of the Sepoy is always extreme, and his suspicions are easily
aroused. Their superstitions and religious customs "interfere in many
strange ways with their military duties." "The brave men of the 35th
Native Infantry," says Sir Charles Napier, "lost caste because they
did their duty at Jelalabad; that is, they fought like soldiers, and
ate what could be had to sustain their strength for battle." But