few thousand white men among millions of Asiatics, stood shoulder to
shoulder, calm, fearless, determined, ready to brave the onslaught of
their enemies, to maintain with undiminished lustre the proud deeds of
their ancestors, and to a man resolved to conquer or to die.

Who can recount the numberless acts of heroism, the hairbreadth escapes,
the anxious days and nights passed by our gallant countrymen, who, few
in number, and isolated from their comrades, stood at bay in different
parts of the land surrounded by hundreds of pitiless miscreants, tigers
in human shape thirsting for their blood? And can pen describe the
nameless horrors of the time--gently nurtured ladies outraged and
slain before the eyes of their husbands, children and helpless infants
slaughtered--a very Golgotha of butchery, as all know who have read of
the Well of Cawnpore?

The first months of the rebellion were a fight for dear life, a constant
struggle to avert entire annihilation, for to all who were there it
seemed as though no power on earth could save them. But Providence
willed it otherwise, and after the full extent of the danger was
realized, gloomy forebodings gave way to stern endeavours. Men arose,
great in council and in the field, statesmen and warriors--Lawrence,
Montgomery, Nicholson, Hodson, and many others. The crisis brought to
the front numbers of daring spirits, full of energy and resource, of
indomitable resolution and courage, men who from the beginning saw the
magnitude of the task set before them, and with calm judgment faced the
inevitable. These were they who saved our Indian Empire, and who, by the
direction of their great organized armies, brought those who but a few
years before had been our mortal enemies to fight cheerfully on our
side, and, carrying to a successful termination the leaguer of Delhi,
stemmed the tide of the rebellion, and broke the backbone of the Mutiny.