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PREFACE.

ELIHU JAN is not a fictitious character. She was brought up in the Court of Lucknow from her seventh year, as related in the first chapter of the following work. She was for many years hookah attendant to the queen of Oudh, and of course thus became acquainted with much that happened in the palace. After the mutiny, she was first an ayah in the household of Mr. Johannes, the wealthy merchant of Lucknow, and subsequently entered my wife's service in the same capacity. She has been with us now nearly three years, is still in our service, and, so far as I have been able to verify her

accounts of the queen's private life, I have found them to be true. I therefore believe the truth of the whole, and I have narrated it as much as possible in her own words, and with her own reflections-allowances being made for the translation from Urdu into English.

HIMALAYA CLUB, MUSSOORIE:

June 1864.

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ELIHU JAN'S STORY.

CHAPTER I.

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES.

THE earliest thing I can remember is that my father, Ashabad Khan, lived with his two brothers in our village, long, long ago, some fifteen or sixteen miles from Lucknow. The cottage was divided into three tenements, each of which had its separate door, and was shut off from the rest by its own partition wall. The lands the three brothers cultivated were crown lands, belonging to the king at Lucknow, and it was not without difficulty that the rent was paid. It was not the rent alone that made the difficulty, but the exactions of the various king's servants, who claimed sums as their rights over and

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