The criminal, enveloped in a white shroud, with the cap drawn over his head, has just been hanged and is still whirling round on the cord, while the people stand in mute bewilderment before the instructive sight. There is but a single hoarse voice raised from among the crowd: “There now—serves him right, too!” But these words are immediately hushed by several women’s voices crying out, “What are you saying? It is beyond us to condemn him now. Let God Almighty pass judgment on him!”
Meantime the snow continues to fall, the smoke is rising from the factories, work is going on as usual....
It is worthy of notice that this last painting, while it did not please the Russians, pleased the English people very much indeed; on the other side the “Blowing from guns in India” is not at all liked by Englishmen, and yet the Russians fancied it very much. Men who had seen much service in India assured me that I was mistaken in presenting such an execution as a typical, characteristic way of capital punishment in that country; they insisted that this mode of execution had been adopted but once—in the course of the last insurrection of the Sepoys—and even at that time it had been used only in a very few instances. But I maintain that this mode of execution—a comparatively humane one too—not only has been in constant use during the revolt referred to, when the Sepoys were blown from guns by the thousand, but that it was used by the British authorities in India for many years before and after the Sepoy revolt of 1858. More than that, I am quite positive that that particular mode of execution will have to be used in future times. The Hindoo does not fear any other kind of capital punishment received at the hands of the “heathenish, unclean Europeans.” They hold that any one shot down or hanged by the European goes to swell the ranks of the martyrs who are entitled to a high reward in the future life. But an execution by means of a gun carries positive terror into the heart of a native, for such a shot tears the criminal’s body in many parts, and thus prevents him from presenting himself in decent form in heaven. This bugbear was used by the British, and will be used by them as long as they fear to lose their Indian possessions.