resumed their conversation.[1] Two hours at mid-day, by mutual consent, were set apart for meals and recreation. Our engineers calculated that seven years would be spent before a breach could be effected; and Colonel Frederick, an officer of high spirit, and animated with the most eager anxiety for the success of this important service, was seized with such chagrin that he fell sick and died. At the end of six months, however, the garrison, for want of provisions, and discouraged by the fall of Bangalore, capitulated, and the great Mahratta army then moved leisurely forward to join their European allies in Mysore.
Had the junction of the Mahrattas taken place somewhat earlier, some heavy sacrifices might have been averted; but as it was, their accession was most welcome, for they brought a supply of bullocks, with large stores of all necessary articles of consumption; and the scarcity in the cantonments of the English, which previously amounted almost to famine, ceased, so far as they were willing to pay the enormous prices that were extorted from their necessities. Every article abounded in that predatory host: the bazaar of the Mahratta camp, says Colonel Wilks, "presented an exhibition of no ordinary character, and to their famished visitors exhibited a picture of the spoils of the East and the industry of the West. From a web of English broad cloth to a Birmingham penknife; from the shawls of Cashmere to the second-hand garment of a Hindoo; from diamonds of the first water to the silver ear-ring of a poor plundered village maiden; from oxen, sheep, and poultry to the dried salt fish of the Conean; almost everything was seen that could be presented by the best bazaars of the richest towns. But, above all, the tables of the money-changers, overspread with the coins of every country of the East, in the open air and public street of the camp, gave
- ↑ As there are no pioneers attached to the Mahratta artillery to repair the roads, this deficiency is compensated by an additional number of cattle, there being sometimes a hundred or a hundred and fifty bullocks in a string of pairs to one gun. – Dirom.
