CHAPTER XXIV.
MOHAMMEDAN INDIA.
Strictly speaking, the term, Mohammedan India, could only be applied to those frontier districts in which the Mohammedans have a preponderating influence, but the Mohammedan emperors left such conspicuous monuments of their reign in Lucknow, Delhi and Agra that it does not violate the proprieties to thus describe this section. The Mohammedans themselves have laid virtual claim to this territory by the establishment of their chief college at Aligahr, nearly equidistant from Agra and Delhi, and their claim is still further strengthened by the fact that while they have not a majority, they have a very large percentage of the population of both of the last named cities.
In approaching this section of India from the east, the tourist passes through Cawnpore, made memorable by the massacre of the British residents during the mutiny of 1857. The recollection of the mutiny is still fresh in the minds of the British officials, and numerous monuments have been reared to the bravery of the besieged garrisons.
At Calcutta one is shown a black piece of pavement which covers a part of the Black Hole of Calcutta (the rest of the hole is now covered by a building) where in 1756 one hundred and forty-six human beings were forced to spend the night and from which only twenty-three escaped alive. The hole was twenty-two by fourteen feet and only sixteen or eighteen feet in height, and the awful sufferings of those who perished there are commemorated by an obelisk which stands near by.
But the cruelty practiced at the time of the mutiny far more stirred the English heart, and as the uprising was more extensive, several cities contain memorials. Of these the most beautiful is at Cawnpore, and is called "The Angel of the Resurrection." It is made of white marble and represents an angel with hands crossed and each holding a palm. It stands upon an elevated mound in a beautiful park, and is enclosed by a stone screen. It was the gift of Lord and Lady Canning and bears the following 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, 1857."
There is also at Cawnpore, in another park, a stately memorial church, the inner walls of which are lined with tablets containing the names of British soldiers who lost their lives during the mutiny.
Lucknow is not far from Cawnpore, and here, too, the mutiny has left its scars and monuments. The Lucknow residency, now an ivy mantled ruin, was the scene of the great siege that lasted from the first of July, 1857, to the seventeenth of November. At the beginning there were within the walls nine hundred British troops and officers, one hundred and fifty volunteers, seven hundred native troops, six hundred women and children and seven hundred non-combatant natives; total, about three thousand. When relief came but one thousand remained. The night before the arrival of Sir Colin Campbell with reinforcements, one of the besieged, a Scotch girl, dreamed of the coming of relief, and her dream gave rise to the song so familiar a generation ago, "The Campbells Are Coming."[5]