CHAPTER XXVI.
WESTERN AND CENTRAL INDIA.
Amongst the few matters on which the British had reason to congratulate themselves when the Mutiny broke out there stood out prominently the fact that the administration of the Western Presidency was in the hands of a man so capable, so brave, so resolute, and so unselfish as was Lord Elphinstone. From the very hour the news of the rising of the 10th of May, at Mírath, reached him he displayed a power equal to every emergency. He arranged to despatch to Calcutta the 64th and 78th regiments, then on their way from Persia; he telegraphed to Mr Frere, Commissioner of Sind, to send the 1st Bombay Fusiliers from Karáchí to the Panjáb; he urged General Ashburnham to proceed to Calcutta to place at the disposal of Lord Canning the troops proceeding to China; he chartered steamers, he wrote for troops to Mauritius and to the Cape, he entrusted the care of Bombay to the wise supervision of Mr Forjett, and he formed a moveable column with the object of saving the line of the Narbadá and of relieving Central India.
In his own Presidency Lord Elphinstone had need for the exercise of the greatest prudence combined with the greatest decision. The nobles and landowners of the districts known as the Southern Maráthá country, comprising the territories of Belgáon, Jamkhandí, Kolápur, Míráj, Múdhal, Dhárwár, Sanglí, and Satárah had been alienated by the
