About a mile further on, from an eminence we could distinctly see the town, with its thick and high walls, inside of which was a strong-built stone fort. With a glass we could see people on the walls and bastions in great numbers, and guns peeping from the embrasures, of enormous size. When we were in complete view, they indulged us with a few sixty-four pounders; so that we were obliged to give them a much wider field. One of our guides stated that he had been in the fort, as a mendicant priest, and we had no reason to question his veracity. He produced a long sketch of the fortifications, strength, number of troops, &c., that induced some timid ones to make their last wills, and even impressed the more resolute with the idea that they had not a light job before them. Guns were new-flinted, pistols reloaded, swords fresh-pointed, and preparations were busily making on all sides, while searching for a place called the Home Doongra, which was an eminence that looked into the fort, at a distance of about two miles from their centre bastion, and near which we intended to encamp. Whenever the enemy saw our men collected on this height, they saluted us with long shots from a gun of enormous size. Several smaller ones were also thrown, and some of them were well directed. This is easily accounted for. I have frequently found that, wherever there was good cannonading, the golundauze gunners had been taught in the Company's army. I have no doubt that many of our native gunners enter the Company's service in those situations, as a preparatory step to entering the service of a native prince or rajah in the same capacity. The gunners are the only class of men in the service of these rajahs that are regularly paid. In the Company's army, a sepoy, or other servant, can always leave, by expressing his disinclination to continue in the service; and this great indulgence is very often taken advantage of by well-drilled men, who have been taught all the minutiæ of military evolutions, and are probably proficients in gunnery. It is not an uncommon thing in native armies, for persons of this description to get fifty or sixty rupees per month, when other soldiers are glad to get four. In this fort were three or four men, who had, in the manner I have described, acquired a complete knowledge of gunnery, and were good shots. These men are so highly extolled among their caste, that they will madly throw themselves upon the bayonet, rather than desert the gun which they command. Two of the golundauze in this fort were killed during the siege; the other returned to his home, which was Allahabad.