I have always urged the authorities to send away, as fast as possible, those who have arrived as refugees. We have a vast camp, or rather position, five miles in circumference, and we are constantly obliged to take every man into the field. The guard for our sick is trifling enough, and our difficulties would be increased were there women also to be thought of; and God forbid that any more lives should be risked in this dreadful servile war. There is also another consideration of much weight against the tender sympathy which prompts the offer. How is a delicate woman's constitution to bear up against the evils of a tented field in the rains, or render efficient service in such a climate as this is now? They would all very speedily become patients in the very hospitals which they came to serve and would so willingly support. The flannel garments are invaluable, and this is all that can be done for us by female hands at present.
_July 29th._--I have been so occupied with business all day that I have only time to say we have had no more fighting, and the whole atmosphere is still, but hot, oh, so hot! General Wilson is unwell, and will probably break down, like the rest. These sexagenarians are unfit for work in July. I expect Napier will be with the advancing troops. I sincerely hope so. He is the man to do something, if they will but let him.
_July 31st._--I intended writing more fully to make up for my late short-comings, but the Pandies permit it not. They made an attempt on our position this morning; nothing more, however, than a distant cannonade. A large party have moved round in our rear, and this has kept me in the saddle all day. I have just returned, after some hours of the heaviest rain I was ever out in, drenched to the skin, of course, and somewhat tired, so judge what a comfort a dry flannel shirt must be. There was no actual fighting, so with the exception of keeping us out so long, and a great expenditure of powder and shot, no harm was done.
_August 1st._--The continued heavy rain promises to give me more time for pen-work to-day, if no more takes place on this side of Pandy-monium. The box has arrived safely with the new "jumpers," &c. Lord William's additions are invaluable. We have fresh accounts from below that every European woman and child have been ruthlessly murdered at Cawnpore. The details are too revolting to put on paper, and make one's blood boil. Mothers with infants in their arms murdered with fiendish cruelty, and worse than all, two young girls just arrived from England are said to have been only saved to meet a worse fate in some Mussulman's zenana. There will be a day of reckoning for these things, and a fierce one, or I have been a soldier in vain. You say there is a great difference between doing one's duty and running unnecessary risks, and you say truly; the only question is, what is one's duty. Now, I might, as I have more than once, see things going wrong at a time and place when I might be merely a spectator, and not "on duty," or ordered to be there, and I might feel that by exposing myself to danger for a time I might rectify matters, and I might therefore think it right to incur that danger; and yet if I were to get hit, it would be said "he had no business there;" nor should I, as far as the rules of the service go, though in my own mind I should have been satisfied that I was right. These are times when every man should do his best, his utmost, and not say, "No; though I see I can do good there, yet, as I have not been ordered and am not on duty, I will not do it." This is not my idea of a soldier's duty, and hitherto the results have proved me right. Poor Eaton Travers, of Coke's regiment, was killed this morning. He had just come from England _viâ_ Bombay, with a young wife, whom he left at Lahore. Poor young thing, a sad beginning and end for her. We send off convoys of the sick and wounded to Umbâla, where we hear they are well tended and are doing well. Even here everything possible is done for them; Dr. Brougham is an excellent man, and first-rate surgeon, quite the man of the camp in his line, clever, indefatigable, and humane.