REMINISCENCES OF SONEPORE. 247 



her in good stead in the many dangers she passed through by 

 her husband's side and which would have crushed a less daunt- 

 less spirit. Although she was everything that was soft, win- 

 ning and womanly, her heart knew no fear. During the time 

 of the Sind Mutiny she rode along with her husband at the 

 head of his regiment, which was disaffected, 129 marches 

 from Umballa to Shikarpur, where the mutiny burst out. 

 They were encamped in the month of July under canvas at 

 Roree on the Indus, with the thermometer ranging from 

 127 to I30F. daily in the shade. Strange to say, during 

 that heat they had only one man sick in hospital, although after 

 they reached their head-quarters at Shikarpur to Muttra, they 

 rode over the late battlefield of Ferozeshah to reach their 

 camp. When proceeding with the Bombay column from 

 Sukkur en route for Mooltan, before the surrender of that fort, 

 Sir Charles Napier stopped the regiment, at the head of which 

 were the Colonel and his wife, to compliment her on the 

 example she had set during her two years' stay in Sind. Sir 

 Charles and his staff often drank a toast after dinner to * The 

 Star of the Desert' as they used to call her. She w r as present 

 with her husband at Shikarpur during the Sind Mutiny, when 

 that wily old General, George Hunter, induced a Native Infantry 

 Regiment to proceed to Sukkur to have their supposed griev- 

 ances inquired into, and then trapped them on arrival by a 

 wing of the i3th Light Infantry and a masked battery of Euro- 

 pean artillery. This ruse resulted in about sixty of the mutin- 

 ous ringleaders being given up on threat of the regiment being 

 annihilated. Fifty were transported for life and eight were 

 hanged on one gallows. Seven of the latter spared all trouble 

 to the executioner by jumping off the platform and thereby 

 strangling themselves, while the eighth continued to call on 

 his regiment to come to his rescue until the bolt was drawn.' 

 "She took her handsome Arab Cuckoo home with her, and 

 used to ride him regularly in the Park ; we believe the old 



