48 MAJOR W. HODSON. 



devoured by avarice and ambition, and when roused, 

 horribly cruel. This latter accusation he rebuts by 

 alleging the necessity of the case and the ferocity of 

 those he has to deal with. To us, however, his fond- 

 ness for flaying men alive, cutting off their noses and 

 ears and hands, &c., savours of the inexcusable. He 

 was accused of having flayed 12,000 men, which he 

 indignantly asserted was a monstrous calumny, as 

 he only skinned three; afterwards he confessed to 

 tli7'ee hundred ! Yet he is not a bit worse, and in 

 many ways infinitely better, than most native 

 princes. Lawrence doubts whether one could be 

 found with fewer faults, if placed in similar 

 circumstances." 



Of the costumes of the Sikh sirdars, " the eff'ect," 

 says Hodson, " is always good, however bright they 

 may be. They never make a mistake in colours." 

 On the 25th Lawrence knew there would be no 

 fighting, for the recusant Imam-ud-din was already 

 on his way to make full submission. By the end of 

 October he had yielded himself up to the safe keep- 

 ing of Captain Herbert Edwardes, who on the 1st of 

 November brought him into the camp of Colonel 

 Lawrence. 



While Edwards was escorting his penitent captive 

 to Lahore, Hodson himself accompanied his patron 

 into the beautiful valley for the purpose of installing 

 Gulab Singh in the capital of his new dominions. On 

 November 4 Lawrence's party crossed the Pir Panjal 

 Pass 12,000 feet above the sea, with snow all around 

 them. The road from Than a to the top of the pass 

 was, in Hodson's words, "most lovely the whole 

 way, winding up a glen wooded magnificently, and 

 the rocks towerinsi: above us on all sides ; the trees 



