Beyond the fort stands the Jama Masjid, the vast mosque, said to be the largest in the world. It is a great building of red sandstone and marble, "upstanding from a platform reached on three sides by flights of steps so tall, so majestically wide, that they are like a stone mountain." At the head of each flight is a splendid gateway, and that which faces eastward is opened for none save the Viceroy, who rules India, and the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab. At the mosque are preserved some Moslem relics, which the guardian priest will show for a fee—a slipper of Mohammed, a hair of the Prophet, his footprints in stone, and a piece of the green canopy which was once over his tomb.
Now we will go into the city proper. Here is indeed a change! Mill chimneys pour into the blue sky their long trails of black smoke. Marble halls and mighty Kings seem very far off as you traverse a cotton-spinning quarter where Delhi measures itself against Manchester. The narrow streets are dirty and squalid, and filled with a crowd whose dingy robes and shabby turbans bespeak the modern artisan of industrial India. Many strange things has this ancient city seen, but nothing stranger than this last turn of her fortunes, when she bends to her clacking loom, and boasts that with her own cotton she can spin as fine as any mill in Lancashire.
CHAPTER X
IN THE MUTINY COUNTRY
Now we will leave Delhi and the Jumna, and strike away to the south-east towards the parent river, the Ganges. Our journey lies across a rich portion of the Great Plain, and this portion has a name of its own. It is called the Doab, or Douab, the Land of Two Rivers, since it lies between the Jumna and the Ganges. It is a most fertile stretch of country, well watered and well tilled, yielding great crops of sugar, rice, and indigo.
At last we reach Cawnpore, on the Ganges, and now we are in the very heart of the Mutiny country. Here took place the most dreadful incident of that great struggle—the massacre of white women and children who fell into the hands of Nana Sahib, a rebel leader. Their bodies were flung into a well, and to-day a beautiful monument stands over the place. The well is enclosed by a fine stone screen, and over the gateway is carved the words: "These are they which came out of great tribulation." In the centre of the enclosure, directly over the well itself, rises the figure of a beautiful white marble angel, and the well bears this inscription: "Sacred to the perpetual memory of a great company of Christian people, chiefly women and children, who near this spot were cruelly murdered by the followers of the rebel Nana Dhundu Pant, of Bithur, and cast, the dying with the dead, into the well below, on the 15th day of July, MDCCCLVII." Near by is the pretty little cemetery where the victims were buried when the British troops seized Cawnpore two short days after the massacre.
The Cawnpore of to-day is a busy industrial town noted for the manufactures of cotton and leather, and when the visitor has seen the places connected with the massacre, the railway will soon carry him to Lucknow, where the most deeply interesting memento of the Mutiny is to be found. This is the Residency, the great house where the tiny British garrison, with hundreds of women and children in their charge, held at bay vast numbers of rebels from May to November, 1857.
The defence of Lucknow is among the finest stories of British valour and British endurance. Assault after assault was made by hordes of well-armed and well-trained mutineers, for the men who wished to slay the British had been drilled by them. Ceaseless showers of shot and shell were poured into the place, and by the middle of September two-thirds of the gallant defenders were dead of wounds or disease. Still the brave remnant held their own, and kept the foe at bay. Among the earliest losses was the greatest of all. This was the death of Sir Henry Lawrence, who governed at Lucknow. By the foresight and prudence of this great and unselfish man means were provided by which the garrison was enabled to make good its defence; but he was killed by a shell, and died on the 4th of July, 1857. His grave is covered by a marble slab, on which is carved this fine and simple inscription, chosen by himself: "Here lies Henry Lawrence, who tried to do his duty."
Towards the end of September General Havelock cut his way into Lucknow, but he had not men enough to carry away the besieged in safety. The rebels closed round the Residency once more, and the siege went on. In November Sir Colin Campbell arrived with a stronger army, and, after most desperate fighting, defeated the mutineers and relieved the heroic garrison.
As a memento of that stern struggle and noble defence, the Residency has been preserved to this day just as it stood at the end of that terrible six months. The walls still bear the marks of shot and shell, the shattered gates show where assault after assault was delivered, the brick gateway of the Baillie Guard is pointed out as the famous spot where rescued and rescuers met.