While he is hastening to it, I must ask the reader to glance at the districts which, with Banáras, face the south-east frontier of Oudh — the districts of Juánpur, of Ázamgarh, and of Gorákhpur. I will not detain him long.
The landowners of those districts had been made hostile to British rule by the introduction of that land system with which Mr Thomason, forcing European ideas upon an oriental people, had superseded the time-honoured methods which not even Akbar had dared to repeal. Ázamgarh was the first to display disaffection. The bulk of the 17th Regiment N. I. stationed there rose on the 3d of June, and though the place, abandoned by the civilians, was afterwards recovered by two men cast in the heroic type, Messrs Venables and Dunn, it continued for a very long time to be a festering sore in the British side. At Juánpur, nearly midway between Banáras and Ázamgarh, the Sikhs stationed there, excited by the story of the manner in which their countrymen had been mowed down at Banáras, rose on the 5th of June. That place, though constantly reoccupied, continued to give trouble until the autumn of the following year. Gorákhpur, on the Nipál side of Ázamgarh, saved for a long time by the splendid daring and cool judgment of its Judge, Mr William Wynyard, gave way in July. Few districts gave more trouble during the revolt, or afforded more scope for the display of the noblest qualities of the British race, than did those three districts — bounded to the north-west by Oudh, to the north by Nipál, to the south by the city of Banáras, and to the south-east by the inflammable division of Western Bihar — represented by Juánpur, Ázamgarh, and Gorákhpur.
Meanwhile, Neill, accompanied by forty-three men of his splendid regiment, had left Banáras by post, on the night of the 9th of June, to assume command at Allahábád.
