tion, I should not suppose it half that age. It is, so far as I could judge by the eye, about a hundred and ten or a hundred and twenty feet high. The view from the top is very extensive, but, at the present season of the year, there is so much dust and glare that a distant prospect cannot be seen to advantage in this part of India. On our return from the fort I found the killedar with a number of people round him, seated on the roof of the colonnade which I have mentioned. I paid him some compliments in passing, on the magnificence and strength of his castle, which he received in a surly manner enough, barely standing up to return my civilities. I suspect that, though compelled by the order of his superiors to admit me, he was not well pleased at seeing Feringees within his castle, and perhaps still less so, that they came by the invitation of another person. We returned down the hill by torch-light, greatly pleased with our visit. We did not see much of the rampart, but were struck by the very slight appearance of precaution or defence at the gates which we passed. There was only one clumsy piece of cannon visible, and the number of armed men did not altogether amount to sixty. A considerable population resides within the fort, but they seemed all Brahmins, weavers, and market-people. If well garrisoned by a British force, the place would, with the addition of some casemates, be very nearly impregnable. Its situation is such, that to batter it could be of little use, and, from its great exfent, shells would not occasion much danger to the garrison. But to man its walls, even in the most imperfect manner, would require a moderate army. In our way back through the town, a man begged of me, saying that he was blind. On my calling him, however, he came forwards so readily to the torches, and saw, I thought so clearly, that I asked him what he meant by telling me such a lie. He answered that he was night-blind ("rat unda"), and I, not understanding the phrase, and having been a good deal worried VOL. II. during the day with beggars, for the whole fort is a swarm of nothing else, said peevishly "darkness is the time for sleep, not for seeing." The people laughed as at a good thing, but I was much mortified afterwards to find that it was an unfeeling retort. The disease of night blindness, that is, of requiring the full light of day to see, is very common, Dr. Smith said, among the lower classes of India, and to some professions of men, such as soldiers, very inconvenient. The Sepoys ascribe it to bad and insufficient food, and it is said to be always most prevalent in a scarcity. It seems to be the same disorder of the eyes with which people are afflicted who live on damaged or inferior rice, in itself a food of very little nourishment, and probably arises from a weakness of the digestive powers. I was grieved to think I had insulted a man who might be in distress, but Dr. Smith comforted me by saying that, even in respect of night blindness, the man was too alert to be much of a sufferer from the cause which he mentioned. February 23.- From Chittore to Sawa is a stage of ten miles, through a country almost entirely covered with jungle, not close and matted with long grass, but open, of scattered trees and bushes, with a tolerable turf under foot. It abounds, the suwarrs told me, with deer and wild hogs, but has very few tigers. These last, indeed, seem to like long grass and the neighbourhood of water, which is here by no means abundant. There are, however, other beasts of prey. A few nights before, a wolf had carried away a fine lamb from our little flock, close under the nose of the centinel, who did not perceive the robber till too late. Sawa is a good-sized town, walled, and containing two or three well-looking houses, four handsome pagodas, and two very beautiful boolees. An unusual number of drunken men, four or five, showed themselves in the course of the day: they came in two parties to ask justice against some Brinjarrees, who, they said, had beaten and robbed them. It appeared, on cross-examination, that in the Brinjarree encamp F opium market, that, namely, they are red, white, and all colours instead of white only. Neemhaira, and the district round it, containing two hundred and seventy ment, spirits were (in the language of the Calcutta market-book) "procurable." These men had been there, and got into some quarrel, in which they had been soundly beaten, and very possibly rob-five villages, and yielding a revenue, bed too, though this last seemed doubtful, as they had still their usual Rajpoot ornaments of silver about them, which would, I should think, have gone first. I told them I was not the sovereign of the land, and bade them go to the kamdar of the town. I had seen very few drunken men in India before, but the time of "Hoolee" is now coming on, which is the Hindoo carnival, and in which the people of Central India more particularly indulge in all kinds of riot and festivity. The Sepoys of my guard have begun to assail the women whom they pass on their march with singing and indecent language, a thing seldom practised at other times. This is also the season for pelting each other with red powder, as we have seen practised in Calcutta. I have endeavoured, within these few days, to learn the tenure of lands, their rent, &c., but found that the tenure differed in no respect from that described by Sir John Malcolm, and that there was no fixed rent but an annual settlement with Government,-a ruinous system, but too common, as it seems, all over India. February 24.-From Sawa to Neemhaira there are six coss; the first part of the road through jungle again. Indeed the want of people in this part of Meywar is very striking, and the more so because the soil, though stony, is far from bad. Water, however, it is not impossible, may be difficult to obtain except at a considerable expense by piercing the rock. The most common tree, or rather bush, in these forests is the dhâk, with a large broad leaf like a peepul, and a beautiful pink flower which now begins to show itself. Neemhaira is a small town, surrounded with a better rampart and towers than any which I have lately seen, and with a far better cultivation round it of wheat, barley, and poppies. The poppies are very beautiful, the more so indeed from a circumstance which diminishes their value in the as I was told by the town's-people, of three lacs, form a part of Ameer Khân's jaghire, which consists of four or five detached territories, besides the principal one of Tonk, where he himself resides. The income of all together has been variously rated at from ten to twenty-four lacs; fifteen or sixteen may probably be about the amount. This is far more than he ever could have collected honestly during the time of his greatest power, since then he seldom was sure of any part of his territory, except what was actually in the possession of his army, and his great harvest always grew on his neighbour's lands. Neemhaira is administered by a Mussulman officer of his, under the title of "moonshee," a very civil and apparently well-informed person. He furnished us liberally, and without accepting any remuneration, with fuel, grass, &c., as well as with four goats, as a dinner for the people. The encamping ground, however, was bad, the neighbourhood of the town being so well cultivated that no place remained free, except what was covered with stones and ruins. There is a neat cutcherry with three or four small temples and a little mosque in the town; adjoining to the latter is the tomb of Jumsheed Khân, the late Patan chief, who, with Bappoo Sindia, held Oodeypoor in so complete and inhuman subjection. He has been dead, the moonshee told me, these five years. This was his jaghire till his death. At present it is subject to the police of our Government, on account of the following transaction: a great robbery having occurred about a year ago in this district, in which some persons, British subjects from Neemuch, were attacked, stripped, and some of them killed, Colonel Lumley applied to Ameer Khân for justice or damages. The nawâb answered that he had no sufficient army to enforce his authority over so distant a possession, and that he wished that the English would take the district in farm, pay him a fair rent, and govern it in their own way. This offer was accepted. The moonshee, though administering justice in the name of the nawâb, is appointed by Colonel Lumley, and there is a jemautdar with twenty of our horse quartered in the town to secure it and its neighbourhood. This jemautdar, who called on me, is one of the finest old men I have seen, with a grey beard flowing over his breast. He is a Mussulman, and, as I should have supposed from his tall stature, not of this country, but from the north of Hindostan. There is a very beautiful boolee in the town, built within these few years from a legacy left by a rich merchant. It has a noble staircase, and a verandah of rich Saracenic arches round the wall about half-way down. The water is now very low, but in the rains it is full nearly to the brim. These fine boolees seem peculiar to India west of the Jumna, at least I have never met with any like them to the eastward of that river. The practice of having steps down to the edge of the water, as well as corridors and porticos round the wells at certain heights, arises from the religious observances of both Mussulmans and Hindoos, which make washing an inseparable accompaniment of prayer. As works of art and taste they are eminently beautiful, but they are strangely deficient in any mechanical aids for raising the water. No means are used but the small brazen lotee which everybody carries, or at most an earthen jar or skin, the former of which is let down by a long string from the top of one of the galleries, while the other must be carried down to the water's edge and brought up again on the head or back. There is indeed a rude pulley at the top, but this is only used in irrigating the fields, and to bring up the large leathern bucket which is drawn by oxen. CHAPTER XXIV. T NEEMUCH TO BARODA. Neemuch-Character of Rajpoots and Bheels-Good effects of British rule-Boras-Confirmation-Pertaubghur-Manner of collecting Opium-Heat, and parched state of the Country -Festival of the Hoolee-Bheel Huts-Palace of Banswarra-Murder of Female InfantsVisit from the Rawul-Jain Temple-Sham-fight of Bheels-Visit from the Raja of Barreah -Dreadful Famine-Brinjarrees. FEBRUARY 25.-From Neemhaira to Neemuch is between seventeen and eighteen miles, over a more open and rather better cultivated country. Neemuch itself differs in no conspicuous respect from any of the other large cantonments of the Bengal army. It is a stationary camp of thatched bungalows and other buildings, open on all sides, and surrounded by a fine plain for the performance of military evolutions. The soldiers are employed in building a sort of fort, as a shelter to the women, children, and stores, in time of need. There is a fine house here, built by Sir David Ochterlony, and well furnished, but which he has never occupied. These buildings, with the surrounding slip of Meidân, constitute the entire British territory in this neighbourhood, the small town of Neemuch, and most of the surrounding country, belonging to Sindia. The cantonment itself is in fact on his ground, but was sold or ceded by him, though with considerable reluctance, at the last peace. Not even Swabia, or the Palatinate, can offer a more checquered picture of interlaced sovereignties than Meywar, and indeed all Malwah, of which Meywar, in common parlance, is always reckoned a part. In the heart of the territory which on our English maps bears Sindia's colour, are many extensive districts belonging to Holkar, Ameer Khân, the Raja of Kotah, &c.; and here scarcely any two villages together belong to the same sovereign. Sindia, however, though all this is usually | reckoned beyond his boundary, has the lion's share. Never was an arrangement better calculated to ensure protection and impunity to robbers, even if there had not been abundance of jungle and inaccessible rocks, inhabited by a race (the Bheels) whose avowed profession, from the remotest antiquity, has been plunder. The presence of a powerful army in the midst of such a territory, under officers anxious and interested in the maintenance of good order, has, of course, contributed greatly to repress these disorders, and must, as I should apprehend, be regarded as a real benefit and blessing to the country by all its peaceable and industrious inhabitants. I was very hospitably entertained at Neemuch by Captain Macdonald, political agent for this part of India, and brother, to Major Macdonald Kinneir, whose travels in Asia were published some years ago. He was a long time aide-de-camp and secretary to Sir John Malcolm. I derived much valuable information from him respecting the route to Bombay, which is all under his control, and which he had himself surveyed and laid down in a new direction,the route to Saugor, the inhabitants of this and the neighbouring countries, and their rulers. There was no doubt of the route to Saugor (which, in my anxiety to rejoin my wife and children, I had still a great hankering after), through Bundelcund and Mirzapoor being perfectly safe and practicable, though I should latterly find the heat very oppressive in marching, and almost | intolerable in a palanquin. Nor, indeed, did it appear that there were means for laying a dâk in that direction, so that I could not hope to arrive on the river till the 20th or 21st of April. As to the facilities of proceeding from Mirzapoor by water, I found two opposite statements; some maintaining that the passage might, by the help of the stream, be made in six weeks; while one officer, who said he had himself performed it, declared that it would, from the delay occasioned by the southern monsoon, occupy at least two months or ten weeks, even supposing, which was not always to be expected, that the Moorshedabad river was open, and that I was spared the detour by Chudna and the Sunderbunds, which would make three weeks more. On the whole, unless I determined to go by dâk from Benares to Calcutta, a measure not to be adopted in April or May without real necessity, I found that I should gain but little time by giving up Bombay, while by doing so, the sacrifice of probable usefulness and future convenience which I should make would be very great. I therefore made up my mind, though with a heavy heart, to go on, in the hope that a kind Providence would still continue to watch over those dear objects, to meet whom in safety, after my long absence, was at present my chief earthly wish. I determined, however, on relinquishing my visit to Mhow, because Captain Macdonald assured me both that the earlier in April I left the hot country of Guzerât the better, and also that after the middle of that month I should find considerable difficulty in obtaining a passage by sea from Surat to Bombay. The character of the Rajpoots, and their government, Captain Macdonald represented in unfavourable terms. The people, who are grievously oppressed, and have been, till very lately, engaged in incessant war, have the vices of slaves added to those of robbers, with no more regard to truth than the natives of our own provinces, exceeding them in drunkenness, fondness for opium, and sensuality, while they have a blood-thirstiness from which the great mass of Hindoos are very far removed. Their courage, however, and the gallant efforts they made to defend their territories against the Maharattas, deserve high praise; and some effects of a favourable nature have been produced among them by the intercourse which they have had with the English. The specimens of our nation which they have hitherto seen have, on the whole, been very favourable. None of the king's regiments have yet been sent here, and few Europeans of any description except officers. They have, therefore, seen little of the drunkenness and violence of temper which have made the natives of our own provinces at once fear and despise a Feringee soldier, and they still, Captain Macdonald says, admire us more and wonder more at the difference of wisdom, morals, and policy which they perceive between us and them, than any other people with whom he has had intercourse in India. And he is of opinion that their present state of feeling affords by no means an unfavourable soil for the labours of a missionary. The Bheels were regarded both by him and the other officers with whom I conversed, as unquestionably the original inhabitants of the country, and driven to their present fastnesses and their present miserable way of life by the invasion of those tribes, wherever they may have come from, who profess the religion of Brahma. This the Rajpoots themselves, in this part of India, virtually allow, it being admitted in the traditional history of most of their principal cities and fortresses, that they were founded by such or such Bheel chiefs, and conquered from them by such and such children of the Sun. Their manners are described as resembling, in very many respects, those of the Rajmahal Puharrees. And, thieves and savages as they are, I found that the officers with whom I conversed thought them, on the whole, a better race than their conquerors. Their word is more to be depended on, they are of a franker and livelier character, their women are far better treated and enjoy more influence, and though they |