304 A Sportswoman in India 



general in command do that night and the next day ? 

 Simply nothing at all. Oh for a John Nicholson at 

 that moment ! 



Another sight had seen that morn, 

 From Fate's dark book a leaf been torn ! 



No one was more astonished than the natives in 

 Delhi that no help came from Meerut ; and finding 

 this to be the case, the native troops in cantonments, 

 consisting of three regiments of native infantry and a 

 battery of artillery, threw in their lot with the mutineers, 

 shot down their officers, and the whole Mohammedan 

 population of Delhi rose. So runs the history of the 

 Mutiny. 



Leaving the city on our right, we drove up first 

 on to the famous Ridge, and along it to the Flagstaff 

 Tower. The country is a good deal overgrown now 

 with small thickets between the Ridge and the city, 

 but we made out the positions of the guns when the 

 city was finally shelled and taken. 



It must have been a weary sojourn on the Ridge for 

 the little British force, who were encamped upon it for 

 three long months, until sufficiently reinforced to take 

 the city. All that they could do was to hold the 

 position until the arrival of the siege-train and rein- 

 forcements ; their sufferings from the heat, and after- 

 wards the rains, from cholera and sunstroke, dysentery 

 and enteric, and from the daily attacks of the rebels, 

 must have been great. 



Along the top of the Ridge runs a road, and from 



