32 CAWNPORE.
gossip which is the chief material of Calcutta journalism, there peer out certain vague and uncomfortable paragraphs. “A rumour has been current among “the sepoys at Dumdum and Barrackpore that they “are to be baptized, and we hear that they are greatly “alarmed in consequence. It should be explained to “them that the only ceremony of the kind to which ‘soldiers are required to submit is the baptism of “fire.” Again, a letter from Barrackpore announces that “bungalows here are set fire to every night.” On the 10th of February, “a Hindu” solemnly warns the Governor-General thus: “My Lord, this is the “most critical time ever reached in the administra- “tion of British India. Almost all the independent “native Princes and Rajahs have been so much “offended at the late Annexation policy, that they “have begun to entertain deadly enmity to the “British empire in India. Moreover, as for the “internal defences of the empire, the cartridge “question has created a strenuous movement in “some portions of the Hindu sepoys, and will “spread it through all their ranks over the whole “country to the great insecurity of British rule.” These notices, which we now read by the light of a terrible experience, appear side by side with satirical poems on their more fortunate comrades by military officers who cannot get civil employ ; advertisements
