Through the Mutiny. By the late Colonel Thomas Nicholls Walker.
(Gibbings and Co. Is. 6d.)—T. N. Walker went out as a Cadet in the Honourable East India Company's Army in 1854, was sent to Benares to do duty with the 67th Bengal Native Infantry, and was posted three months later to the 60th. He was at Umballah when the Mutiny broke out, and his story begins with a highly interesting narrative of how he saved the regi- mental armoury from being looted by the mutineers. His Colonel sent him on a message to the officer commanding a troop of horse artillery,—" He was not to bring his guns down lest the sight of them should drive the men into mutiny " ! It is pathetic to see how the old Indian officers clung to their belief in their men's loyalty. These and other experiences have been told, doubtless, before ; but when we get them at first hand, as in this volume, we cannot tire of them. On June 8th the 60th finally mutinied. Lieutenant Walker was attached to the 2nd European Bengal Fusiliers, and with that regiment served before Delhi. One curious incident of the siege is this. Brigadier Jones com- manded one of the attacking brigades. His orders were to advance to the Cabal Gate. He got as far as the Lahore Gate in the heat of the action ; finding this out, he ordered a retreat to the Cabal Gate. " It took us six days to retake Lahore Gate, many valuable lives being lost, among them the brave and able General Nicholson." It had been practically in our hands on the first day. But the enemy strengthened the defence. In 1874 Major Walker, as he then was, was employed in relief of the Behar famine. The total amount of grain distributed was two hundred and eighty-two thousand tons, more than all the wheat now grown in Great Britain. Colonel Walker served in the cam- paign against the Naga hill tribes in 1879-80, and three years later retired from the Army. He died in 1903.
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