1 210 MISCELLANEOUS NOTICES.
2 permitting his troops freely to plunder and to practise every
3 excess. More than this, he offered a reward of five rupees
4 for the head of every insurgent or any of those connected with
5 him, man, woman or child ; and in consequence a cool syste-
6 matic massacre ensued, likely to lead to the utter extermination
7 of the miserable people. Panic struck by this display of
8 ferocity, and hopeless of being" able to resist the overpowering'
9 force led by the Rajah, the insurgents dispersed and fled to
10 hide themselves and their families among the rocks and moun-
11 tains, and in the pine forests and jungles, leaving their houses,
12 cattle, and property to the mercy of the advancing army.
13 Often the troops came upon their hiding places, and dis-
14 covered a wretched family pent up together in some den or
15 cavern, where they were, without respect to sex or age,
16 savagely massacred for the sake of the paltry reward put
17 upon their heads. However, after some few days of this ex-
18 terminating slaughter, the Rajah issued an order that the wo-
19 men and female children should be spared, and when taken
20 captive, brought and delivered over to certain officers whom he
21 appointed to take charge of them. Thus in a short time each
22 separate division of the army had in its train a drove of unfor-
23 tunate women and children, driven about like cattle, in the
24 most miserable condition, half starved and scarcely half clad —
25 whatever little clothing they had carried with them in their
26 hasty flight from their homes having been taken from them
27 by the greedy and merciless Dogra soldiers. Sometimes for
28 days no rations were served out to these wretched captives,
29 and they were left dependant for subsistence on what chance
30 threw in their way, or what the rude soldiery might be dis-
31 posed to give them. On the re-assemblage of the army at
32 Pelundheree, these prisoners were gathered into one large herd,
33 consisting of about five thousand females of every age. They
34 were now regularly penned in a sheep-fold secured by a strong-
35 hedge of prickly bushes, and here kept without any proper pro-