52 CAWNPORE.
in every part, compact, flexible, and capable as ever of a great and sustained exertion of strength and courage. This imperfect, but it is to be feared, tedious sketch of the composition of our native force, as it existed before the mutiny, may well be closed with the oracular words of Sir Charles Napier, the Cassandra of the old Bengal army: “ Your young, “independent, wild cadet, will some day find the “Indian army taken out of his hands by the soubahdars. They are steady, respectful, thoughtful, “stern-looking men; very zealous and military: the “sole instructors of all our soldiers.”
The native town of Cawnpore contained sixty thousand inhabitants. It possessed no architectural beauties worthy to detain the traveller who, from those stately landing-places whence rise, tier above tier, the shrines and palaces of Benares, was hurrying on towards the ineffable glories of Agra. The most remarkable feature was a spacious boulevard, more than a hundred feet in breadth, called the Chandnee Choke, or street of silver. This name, common to the principal avenue in all the great cities of the north west, is a monument of the days of bad government, and a primitive commercial system. When banks were few and robbers bold and numerous, men preferred to have some part of their wealth about their persons, and in a portable
