Twenty-eight year-old Lt. Hawkshaw went to Lahore, the capital of the Punjab. He visited the holy city of Benares and Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir. He served with the Royal Artillery in Meerut. He spent time in a Delhi emptied of its Mughals.
Things took a long time to happen during the Raj. The photographs Hawkshaw bought would have seemed contemporary to him. Although the album is from the 1880's, most of its images are from the 1860's. The John Sache shots were largely taken from 1865 through 1869. The Samuel Bourne photographs were made between 1864 and 1866. Only the shots of Hawkshaw in groups or at specific events were taken from 1881 to 1883.
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