Page:The Marquess of Dalhousie.djvu/92

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84
DALHOUSIE'S WORK IN INDIA

the Punjab. The remains of Vans Agnew and Anderson were reverently removed from their humble resting-place, and laid by the victorious British army on the lofty platform which crowns the fortress of Múltán.

From that historic height, which gives the command of the whole middle valley of the Indus, successive conquerors, Greek, Hindu, Muhammadan, Sikh, British, had proudly looked down: beginning with Alexander the Great, who was wounded in the assault of Múltán, onwards through twenty-two centuries. As I stood beside the massive obelisk which shoots up seventy feet from the tomb of the two young officers, and dominates the plains for twenty miles below, I could not help feeling that it was indeed a noble place of sepulture. All around were the memorials of a long heroic past, while the only sound that floated upwards was the continuous creaking of the Persian wheels in the sugar-cane grounds, drawing water for the peaceful toil of the present.

A beautiful marble tablet in the Calcutta Cathedral bears the following epitaph: —

'Not near this Stone, nor in any consecrated ground, but on the extreme frontier of the British Indian Empire, lie the remains of Patrick Alexander Vans Agnew, of the Bengal Civil Service, and William Anderson, Lieutenant, 1st Bombay Fusilier Regiment, Assistants to the Resident at