mint, a large, oblong, fire-proof brick building, capable of holding out against men unprovided with guns, was selected for this purpose.
Towards the end of May the English at Banáras were cheered by the arrival of 150 men of the 10th Foot from Dánápur, and on the 3d and 4th of June, Colonel Neill, with some sixty men of the 1st Madras Fusiliers, followed. On the morning of the 4th news reached the place of the mutiny of the 17th N. I. at Ázamgarh. A council was then called of the chief civil and military authorities to consider the advisability of disarming the 37th N. I. Gubbins, Gordon, Dodgson, and all the bolder spirits were in favour of carrying out that necessary measure at once. They were listening to the strong recommendations of Mr Gubbins on this point when Neill himself entered the room, and in his plain, blunt way insisted that delay would be fraught with imminent danger. Orders then were issued for a parade of the troops of the garrison at five o'clock that afternoon.
The lines of the 37th N. I. were in the centre of the general parade ground, about midway between those occupied by the Sikhs and by the artillery. The question was how, with the 250 Europeans, to disarm a native regiment, nearly a thousand strong, in the presence of three or four hundred cavalry, suspected of sympathy with them, and of a Sikh regiment, believed to be loyal, but whose loyalty must remain unproven until it had been tried. It was a difficult question, and I am bound to add that it was solved in a very clumsy fashion. Before the men of the 37th had formed up in front of their lines, the artillery and the few men of the 10th and the Madras Fusiliers had taken up a position on their right, the Sikhs and irregular cavalry on their left. Colonel Spottiswoode and the English officers of the 37th
