436 



INDIA, BEITISH. 



monarch had ever convoked such a court. The 

 Mogul sovereigns could not have thus commanded 

 the Punjaub ; Runjeet Singh, the great ruler of the 

 Punjaub, could not have controlled the princes on 

 the frontier. But on this occasion none were so high 

 or so low as to neglect the call. Partly from the 

 local renown of Sir John Lawrence, but partly also 

 from the enhanced and growing reputation of the 

 British rule, all concurred in tendering the compli- 

 ment conveyed by the ceremony, even the old and 

 infirm being brought to the rendezvous. The Durbar 

 was held in magnificent tents pitched on a smooth 

 plain outside the walls of Lahore. The commence- 

 ment of the ceremony was expected at nine in the 

 morning, but the smaller chiefs began to arrive at 

 seven, and before half-past eight the highest of the 

 assembly were in their places. In the East mawnifi- 

 cence of costume is still expected, and the dresses 

 of those Asiatic princes might be chronicled like the 

 toilets at our royal drawing-rooms. The Rajah of 

 Jheend was dressed in pure white muslin, gleam- 

 ing all over with diamonds and emeralds, and a vel- 

 low turban. The Maharajah of Putteala, a very 'im- 

 portant personage, wore a dress of rich lavender silk 

 but so overlaid with emeralds and pearls that the 



INDIANA. 



list of presentations of which none could be omitted 

 or hurried ; but so successfully were the ceremonies 

 conducted that half the time was saved, and the 

 Durbar was over at noon. 



color could hardly be distinguished. The Maharajah 

 of Cashmere and his son, a boy often, were in white, 

 with red and yellow turbans, emeralds and diamonds! 

 One chief, of great stature, appeared in black and 



old, with a green turban ; another showed his true 

 ikh extraction by a robe of pure yellow. The 

 characters and histories of these princes were as 

 striking and varied as their apparel. There were 

 the two high priests of the Sikh nation, lineal de- 

 scendants of the very prophet who founded the state. 

 There was the very Sikh nobleman who, as the best 

 horseman of his race, had led the charge against us 

 at Chillianwallah. There was the noble Persian of 

 the Kussilbash tribe who had rescued the English 

 prisoners from Cabul. There was a little nabob, 

 only seven years old, who behaved with as much 

 intelligence and composure as the most experienced 

 ruler. One chieftain present was noted as the hand- 

 somest man in the northwest, another as the wittiest, 

 a third as the heaviestwho was so large, indeed 

 that the arms of his chair had to be cut off before he 

 could be seated. Not a state, not a dynasty, not a 

 principality, not an office, not a dignity remained 

 unrepresented in that Durbar. 



As the entire meeting rose in his honor the Vice- 

 roy addressed the chiefs in their own language with 

 the ease and fluency of a native. Never^up to this 

 time had such a proceeding been recorded. Some 

 of the earlier governors of India could certainly have 

 spoken Hindostanee, but they never enjoyed such an 

 occasion of doing so. It was reserved for Sir John 

 Lawrence to unite the accomplishments and the 

 power which thus brought him into direct inter- 

 course with the rajahs, the maharajahs, the nabobs, 

 and the sirdars of territories once beyond our knowl- 

 edge, and to these princes he addressed words of 

 impressive simplicity and force. He told them how, 

 when he lately stood in the presence of the Queen 

 of England, she had inculcated on him the duty of 

 promoting their welfare, and how her consort, the 

 prince, whose greatness and goodness were every- 

 where known, had always felt the deepest interest 

 m the prosperity of India. He reminded them of 

 the solid advantages which they had actually derived 

 from the English rule, and acknowledged the devo- 

 tion by which in the hour of our peril they had re- 

 paid the obligation. He told them to educate their 

 children in sound learning, and to acquaint them- 

 selves with the true policy and intentions of their 

 rulers, so that they might discern and recognize the 

 character of our Government. Then the whole 600 

 were presented to him one by one, princes and their 

 neirs-apparent, great ministers of state, rajahs and 

 labobs, spiritual potentates and military chiefs. It 

 was thought that six hours would be required for a 



At the beginning of October, a terrible Cy- 

 clone, unprecedented within the remembrance 

 of men, burst over the coast of India. Of the 

 200 ships in the harbor of Calcutta, only eight 

 or nine escaped without suffering any material 

 damage. The following details are supplied by 

 an English paper of India : 



Sixty thousand persons appear to have been de- 

 stroyed by the Cyclone. In the island of Sauo-or out 

 of 8,200 persons but 1,200 have been left. The re- 

 maining seven thousand passed, in less than an hour 

 out of existence. All along the eastern coast of the 

 India peninsula went wind and storm fulfilling His 

 word. It was the time of spring tides, and under 

 the influence of the hurricane the sea rose to an un- 

 exampled height. Up the course of the Ganges the 

 wave rushed, overwhelming the villages on the 

 banks, and leaving the few who survived the flood to 

 perish for want of food ; their grain rotted and their 

 crops were destroyed by the salt water, and they had 

 no resource but to die. But the scene of the greatest 

 disaster appears to have been Masulipatam, about 

 . half-way down the coast. The town lies a little to 

 the north of one of the mouths of the Kistna, on the 

 plain which stretches from the Kistna to the Goda- 

 very. The mud which has for ages been washed 

 down these rivers has formed a district little above 

 the level of the sea. In the wet season it is over- 

 flowed by the freshets of the Kistna, and it requires 

 at all times to be protected from the ocean by sea- 

 walls and dikes. The Cyclone rushing across the 

 Bay of Bengal fell upon the spot which was least 

 prepared to meet it. The centre of the hurricane 

 passed within a mile of the devoted town at 10 p. M. 

 on the 1st November, in a night of utter darkness! 

 Amid the storm of wind a tidal wave thirteen feet 

 higher than the highest tide-mark surmounted sea- 

 walls and dikes and poured over the whole of the 

 surrounding country. For an hour the water rose 

 and covered nearly eight hundred square miles of 

 the plain, and when it retired, at 11, the work of 

 destruction was done. The plain for eighty miles 

 along the coast and from nine to ten miles inland 

 had been submerged, and in one place the storm- 

 wave had reached a spot seventeen miles from the 

 shore. The low built houses of the natives had been 

 washed away, and those which might have reached 

 above the wave had been blown down by the fury 

 of the storm. The fiercest powers of the natural 

 world were at work, and in the darkness of night 

 there was no escape possible, whatever might have 

 been done in the light of day. Whole villages were 

 entirely destroyed ; their inhabitants were drowned, 

 their cattle were lost, their crops were buried 

 beneath a thick deposit of mud and sand. The mud 

 banks were full "of unburied corpses; half the town 

 was in ruins ; fallen trees, drift, the ruins of houses, 

 and deep pools of salt water made streets and roads 

 impassable. Huge barges had been carried into the 

 centre of the town, and masses of solid masonry had 

 been rolled, boulder-like, distances of sixty and 

 seventy yards. In fort and town one-third of the 

 inhabitants had perished. A thousand were drowned 

 in the fort and fifteen thousand in the town, and in 

 the surrounding villages twenty thousand more met 

 their death. In one Brahmin village on the outskirts 

 of Masulipatam seventy only remained alive out of 

 seven hundred. 



INDIANA. The contribution of men from 

 the State of Indiana to the military service- of 

 the United States from the beginning of the 

 war to the 1st of January, 1865, was as follows 



