and Home of the Engineers. No time was lost in raising men to serve under this staff. For the station itself fifty horse constables, and as many foot; for the city a hundred officers and men; a due proportion of police for the outlying circles being also added to the normal strength of the force. Of Government troops there was a weak company in charge of the district treasury. These men were under a native officer, and had been detached from the 29th Native Infantry, quartered at Moradabad, beyond the river Ganges. The sepoys were probably not regarded with much confidence; the Christians took arms, and collected at Mr. Spankie's house, about a mile from the treasury.

One of the first symptoms that the news of the Mutiny had fallen like a spark on the combustible anarchical material of the district, was that the Gujars and other lawless classes began to gather in large and tumultuary masses, and commit excesses which they well knew would not be permitted for a day in ordinary times. Old scores were paid off; village bankers and quiet landholders were plundered or put under requisition; the papers and accounts of the money-lenders were sought for, and written obligations cancelled by very summary liquidation in fire or water. Unrestrained in this private enterprise, the turbulent classes next turned their attention to the treasuries and record-rooms of outlying offices. Expeditions were at once organised, and the sepoys of the 29th found, for the time, an occupation which served to distract their thoughts from mutinous design. Partly to furnish them with such occupation, and also in order to assert authority and maintain the order whose appointed guardian he was, Mr. Spankie organised several expeditions against the predatory tribes, and was everywhere successful. Villages were visited, and-on special signs of refractoriness-set on fire; many offenders were arrested, defaulting revenue-payers were brought to book. The state of things in the chief town, however, soon became so alarming that Mr. Spankie received orders from divisional head-quarters that he was not to leave it. On the 30th May he led the last

expedition in which he took part and it was well that this was so. Captain MacDougall, of the Stud, was informed, by natives on whom he could rely, that there were elements of mischief in the city that were ready to explode if Mr. Spankie did not remain permanently on the spot. The delay in dealing with Dehli, however justified by military considerations, gave natural encouragement to the disaffected among the Musalman population. Not that they were unanimous. Some of their natural leaders attempted to keep them tranquil, if not loyal. But the head of the city police, who was of that faith, was led astray either by fanaticism or by ambition. He began corresponding with the rebel cabinet at Dehli, and received a patent creating him Nawáb-Lieutenant-Governor of the Upper Duáb. Mr. Spankie felt that the time had come when, if he was to hold the district properly, he "must have help from without." On his application to the Panjáb authorities, Mr. W. C. Plowden* crossed the Jumna with a party of the 4th Bengal Cavalry under Captain Wyld, and a company of the 5th Native Infantry under Captain Garstin. An immediate check was given to religious enthusiasm of the felonious kind; and the wealthier Hindu bankers and traders strengthened their bolts and bars and slept secure. The "Nawab " policeman continued to intrigue subterraneously, but he was openly doing his duty. Evidence was not forthcoming, and Mr. Spankie patiently allowed him all possible rope.

On the evening of the 2nd June a crisis took place. Several of the men belonging to the new infantry reinforcement had shown signs of wavering fidelity, and were allowed to take their discharge. They were encamped in the beautiful grounds of the magistrate's house; and while Captain Garstin was sitting at a table preparing to pay them up, they got hold of their arms and fell back upon the gateway of the entrance drive. Mr. Spankie came up, and with nothing but a walking-stick tried to disarm a sepoy who was making ready to fire at him. A native sergeant

* Lately in charge of the Imperial Census.

intervened, and the man was shot. Three officers returning from a drive were at the same time fired upon. Spankie's little hill-messenger ran down from the house with his master's pistol; Wyld called out his men, being shot at thrice while so doing. The mutineers, on this unlooked-for resistance, lost heart, and escaped to their sympathisers in the city in the quickly growing darkness.

Next day arrived Major Bagot with the 3rd Gurkhas or Nasiri Battalion. Their behaviour at Simla had not been free from reproach, and had led the Deputy-Commissioner, Lord William Hay,* to order them away. They came to Saharanpur, bringing cholera with them. At the same time Mr. Spankie got information that shook his confidence in the rest of Garstin's men and in Wyld's troopers; he also got news that the 29th (a detachment of which furnished his treasury-guard) had mutinied at Moradabad. The Gujars, doubtless egged on by the treacherous "Nawáb," threatened to plunder the treasury.

While the defenders of the central station were exposed to these anxieties, the occupants of Rurki had gone through their share of trouble. But, as the doings there were rather military than civil, they may be here briefly disposed of by the remarks that follow. Some of the Sappers were sent away on duty, some mutinied and deserted, a few remained faithful. Colonel Baird Smith made a rough fortification round the workshops, cast guns, supplied the fire-locks and ammunition of the disarmed Sappers to the Christian garrison, rescued two prisoners from the Rohilkhand rebels, collected a certain amount of revenue from the surrounding estates, and approved himself in all things a worthy helper of the district officer until he was summoned to a more important scene.†

*Now Marquess of Tweeddale, whose services in pacifying the regiment were at the moment the means of saving Simla, and ultimately of enabling them to do indispensable work elsewhere, and so, indirectly, of saving Mussooree also. These services were never duly acknowledged.

As Engineer-in-Chief with Sir A. Wilson's force, he bore a most influential part in the taking of Dehli in the middle of September. (Vide Malleson's Mutiny, vol. ii. pp. 3, 4.)

In the Dun, in the meantime, another kind of trouble had arisen. The "lines" of the 1st Gurkhas, who had marched to Dehli, were occupied by the families of the soldiers, guarded by a detachment of eighty men of the regiment under a native officer. The Superintendent blocked the passes by which bad characters might invade the valley without using the high road; this was done by laying down abattis of stone and timber, and by enrolling a sort of militia-guard of trustworthy villagers. In the town of Dehra a patrol of the Christians was organised, so that two of them by roster went round the town and environs at uncertain hours of the day and night. A strong party of the Jalandar mutineers (400 infantry and 200 cavalry in full equipment) invaded the Western Dun in June, but were driven out by the mere rumour that the Superintendent was leading a force against them. The peace of the district remained unbroken, save by a rare foray of the lawless herdsmen of the Trans-Siwálik jungles, five of whom were taken and hanged in one instance.*

What caused the chief inconvenience and difficulty of the Dun was the question of the supplies. A castle twelve miles broad and sixty miles long, with the rear open to the whole glacier-crowned Oberland of the Indo-Thibetan chain, cannot be called a small castle. None the less were the people of Mussooree in the position of a beleaguered garrison. The mountains in rear produced nothing but a little mutton, with coarse grains like millet, sufficing barely for the food of the indigenous mountaineers. The Dun had never been selfsupporting; and the best lands were now being taken up for tea. Food would not be procurable for money, and money, too, was getting scarce. It has been mentioned that the Sanitaria were filled with the families of officers who were engaged in their duties down below. These gentlemen, whenever they got pay, sent it up to their families in the forms of drafts on the public treasury. The treasury was open, but was rapidly being depleted, depending as it did upon supplies forwarded from the

* Vide Malleson, vol. iii. pp. 419-424.

plains, which supplies had now ceased. The Superintendent was not even able to maintain communication with the Provincial Accountant-General at Agra. In this state of things, with official bankruptcy staring him in the face, the Superintendent, after consultation with his friends, adopted a plan suggested by Lieutenant Tennent, of Engineers, and started a paper currency. It was a somewhat hopeless undertaking; but public confidence had not been entirely destroyed-so long as Spankie held his own at Saháranpur—and the business of life had to go on somehow. The notes floated, but they floated at a discount. The ladies, and others, who presented bills at the treasury to be cashed, were naturally unwilling to be paid in a depreciated currency; the moment was critical. In this emergency the authorities of the Panjáb, ever vigilant, even where not personally responsible, came to the front, and sent several remittances of specie. But even this was not enough; and we find Mr. Spankie, amid all the cares created by the condition of his own district, pouring in supplies to the Dun, both in specie and in kind. The official narrative shows that, between the middle of May and the middle of September, he sent to the Dun no less than 3,300 maunds of grain, besides a quantity of bullocks ; over 12,000 rupees to the commissariat officer; 114,000 rupees to the Superintendent of the Dun, who was thus, from this source and from the Panjáb, enabled to issue a certain proportion of specie, along with a balance in paper, until the reopening of communication with the Accountant-General.

It is time to return to Saháranpur. On the night of the 4th June Mr. Spankie attacked the Gujars, by whom the treasury was threatened, and repulsed them with loss, burning two of their villages. On the 8th and 9th came inspiriting rumours that the Meerut garrison had at last taken the field, and then that they had beaten a body of mutineers at Ghaziabad, on the Hindan, and established a junction with the main force of the British under Sir H. Barnard. Two parties were sent out to

* Since, as Colonel Tennent, the distinguished Master of the Calcutta Mint,