38 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
noxious odours and filling the air with the seeds of 
pestilence. The bodies of women and children were 
among the dead and dying, some frightfully mangled 
but yet alive, and imploring most piteously for a drop 
of water to slake the raging thirst that was consuming 
them and adding an intolerable torment to their ex- 
piring agonies. 
All that humanity could suggest was done for these 
unhappy sufferers, but so furious and deadly had been 
the cannonading before the fort surrendered, that few 
of the wounded survived. Upwards of a hundred dead 
bodies were committed to the pile by our native 
troops, and all the wounded put under the care of the 
surgeon who accompanied the British forces, by whose 
combined skill and attention several recovered, though 
most of them died. There were but few prisoners 
taken, and these were treated with great kindness, as 
a mark of their captors’ respect for the bravery they 
had displayed in defence of Kalunga, which has sel- 
dom been equalled and never excelled in the annals of 
Indian warfare. It may stand a fair comparison with 
that so eminently signalised at the memorable siege 
of Bhurtpore, where the veteran Lake received the 
severest check experienced by him during his military 
career in the East, where he won immortal renown. 
On this occasion, though the Ghoorkas had met 
with such severe losses, for they were defeated in 
almost every quarter by the superior discipline of our 
troops, still they manifested none of those symptoms 
of vindictive hostility which they have been repre- 
sented as evincing in an earlier age, and which is 
common to many of the Indian races even at this day. 
