s party was
permitted to pass without molestation, with commendations on their faith
to the British government. They departed, and we proceeded towards the
fort.

About a mile further on, from an eminence we could distinctly see the
town, with its thick and high walls, inside of which was a strong-built
stone fort. With a glass we could see people on the walls and bastions
in great numbers, and guns peeping from the embrasures, of enormous
size. When we were in complete view, they indulged us with a few
sixty-four pounders; so that we were obliged to give them a much wider
field. One of our guides stated that he had been in the fort, as a
mendicant priest, and we had no reason to question his veracity. He
produced a long sketch of the fortifications, strength, number of
troops, &c., that induced some timid ones to make their last wills, and
even impressed the more resolute with the idea that they had not a light
job before them. Guns were new-flinted, pistols reloaded, swords
fresh-pointed, and preparations were busily making on all sides, while
searching for a place called the Home Doongra, which was an eminence
that looked into the fort, at a distance of about two miles from their
centre bastion, and near which we intended to encamp. Whenever the enemy
saw our men collected on this height, they saluted us with long shots
from a gun of enormous size. Several smaller ones were also thrown, and
some of them were well directed. This is easily accounted for. I have
frequently found that, wherever there was good cannonading, the
golundauze gunners had been taught in the Company's army. I have no
doubt that many of our native gunners enter the Company's service in
those situations, as a preparatory step to entering the service of a
native prince or rajah in the same capacity. The gunners are the only
class of men in the service of these rajahs that are regularly paid. In
the Company's army, a sepoy, or other servant, can always leave, by
expressing his disinclination to continue in the service; and this great
indulgence is very often taken advantage of by well-drilled men, who
have been taught all the minutiae of military evolutions, and are
probably proficients in gunnery. It is not an uncommon thing in native
armies, for persons of this description to get fifty or sixty rupees
per month, when other soldiers are glad to get four. In this fort were
three or four men, who had, in the manner I have described, acquired a
compl