From Captain N. C. Boswell to Brigadier C. Grant concerning the substitution of the rifle cartridges, 4 February 1857

From Captain N.C. Boswell, Commanding Left Wing, 2nd Regiment, Native (Grenadier) Infantry, to Brigadier C. Grant, C.B., Commanding at Barrackpore,--No. 89, dated 4th February 1857.

        I have the honor to report that, in obedience to instructions contained in a note of yesterday's date from the Brigadier Commanding the Station to the address of officers commanding regiments at the station; I yesterday afternoon, at a parade of the wing under my command, had fully explained to the men of the wing that the cartridges for the new rifles were to be made up exactly like the five produced on parade, and of the same paper as that sent with the cartridges, and that the sepoys would dip the cartridges themselves in wax and oil before using them.

        I took the cartridges into the ranks and showed them to the men (having one broken open); and upon my asking several of the men here and there in the ranks if they could see anything objectionable in them, their reply, made in the most civil but soldierlike manner, was "that the paper was not the same as that used for the old cartridges, and that they thought there was something in it."

        I deem it my duty to report this circumstance for the information of the Brigadier Commanding, as I imagine there will be no difficulty in substituting the old cartridge paper for that made use of in the construction of the new cartridges.

From: Selections from the Letters Despatches and other State Papers preserved in the Military Department of the Government of India, 1857-58.  Edited by George W. Forrest.  Calcutta: Military Department Press 1893, 13.