e Goorkhas are recruited in the mountain districts of the Himalayas,
in the kingdom of Nepal. They are short and squat in figure, never more
than five feet three inches in height, of dark complexion, with deep-set
eyes and high cheek-bones denoting their affinity to the Turanian race.
Good-humoured and of a cheerful disposition, they have always been great
favourites with the European soldiers, whose ways and peculiarities they
endeavour to imitate to a ludicrous extent. In battle, as I have often
seen them, they seem in their proper element, fierce and courageous,
shrinking from no danger. They carried, besides the musket, a short,
heavy, curved knife called a _kukri_, a formidable weapon of which the
sepoys were in deadly terror. As soldiers they are second to none,
amenable to discipline and docile, but very tigers when roused; they
fought with unflinching spirit during the Mutiny, freely giving up their
lives in the service of their European masters.

And now that I have endeavoured, for the purposes of this narrative, to
explain our position and that of the enemy, I shall proceed to recount,
as far as my recollection serves, the main incidents of the siege, and
more particularly those in which I personally took part.

The camp of my regiment was pitched, as I have said, on the extreme
left of the besieging force, on the rear slope of the ridge. We were
completely hidden from any view of the city, and but for the sound
of the firing close by, which seldom ceased day or night, might have
fancied ourselves far away from Delhi.

Cholera still carried off its victims from our midst, and the very night
of our arrival I performed the melancholy duty of reading the Burial
Service over five gallant fellows of the Grenadier Company who had died
that day from the fell disease.

The heat was insupportable, the thermometer under the shade of my tent
marking 112 deg.F.; and to add to our misery there came upon us a plague
of flies, the like of which I verily believe had not been on the
earth since Moses in that manner brought down the wrath of God on the
Egyptians. They literally darkened the air, descending in myriads and
covering everything in our midst. Foul and loathsome they were, and we
knew that they owed their existence to, and fattened on, the putrid
corpses of dead men and animals which lay rotting and unburied in
every direction. The air was tainted with corruption, and the heat was
intense. Can it, then, be wonder