and there lay the worthless remnants, knocked to pieces on the floors. In some places a heavy fermentation was going on, causing an insupportable smell. The wretched cats were silently moping about, and the poor dogs howled mournfully in the desolate houses.
And this was Delhi, and this her recompense! Far rather would one see a city knocked down and covered with its own ruins, than to behold a scene like this. A tomb in Herculaneum can be contemplated with interest; but Delhi, that night, was like an open grave rifled of its ornaments, and its dishonored, reeking condition lying exposed to the gaze of the lonely visitor. No wonder that its excluded Mohammedan population, as they prowled around its vicinity, said, “This is a worse punishment than that of Nadir Shah. He gave up the city to massacre and pillage for a few days, then all was over, and the surviving inhabitants returned to their homes and employments, and every thing went on as before. The English took no such vengeance; but they drove us out, and week after week they kept us excluded, and will not let us return.”
No doubt, such language correctly represented their feelings. This decided exclusion of them; this calm and continued investigation by the civil and military authorities; this searching out, and bringing to justice, the perpetrators of the crimes of May and June giving them the opportunity of proving their innocence, (one trial alone having lasted ten days,) and then their prompt execution when found guilty of murder—all this, together with the disposition of the Government to acknowledge and reward fidelity where they found it, produced an immense impression. It was so contrary to the rash and indiscriminate mode of Oriental despotism.
When I reached the Kotwalie (the Mayor's office) in the square, a horror came over me as I remembered that I was then standing upon the very ground where, on the 12th and 13th of May, Englishwomen
“Perished
In unutterable shame;”
where good Rajib Ali, and many others with him, were tortured, not accepting the deliverance urged upon them by the raging crowd
