It was a sorry sight to look on the total destruction of our beautiful
mess furniture. Costly goods had been sacrificed which no money could
replace; not one single article belonging to the officers had been
saved.

Gathering together all the silver we could find, and lamenting the
incompetence by which we had lost property amounting in value to £2,000,
we placed everything in a cart and conveyed it to the barracks.

Many months afterwards the Government directed a committee of officers
to value the effects destroyed by the mutineers, to the end that
remuneration might be granted to the regiment for loss sustained. This
committee, after due consideration, placed the estimate at a very low
figure--viz., £1,500. The parsimony of those in power refused us
full payment of this just debt, intimated also that the demand was
exorbitant, and closed all further action in the matter by sending us a
draft on the Treasury for half the amount claimed.

For the first week or ten days after the outbreak at Ferozepore we knew
very little of what was occurring down-country, as well as throughout
the Punjab, the province of the "Five Rivers" to our north. In that
newly-acquired territory there were twenty-six regiments of the native
army, while the Sikhs, the warlike people who inhabited the land, had
met us in deadly conflict only nine years before. From the latter, then,
as well as from the sepoys, there was cause for great anxiety. Every
precaution, therefore, was necessary to guard the Ferozepore Arsenal,
the largest, next to Delhi, in Upper India. The temper of the Sikhs
was uncertain; no one could foretell which side they would take in the
coming struggle. Our Empire in Hindostan--during the month of May more
especially--trembled in the balance. There was infinite cause for alarm