know the post of their chief, and all endeavour to join him, as soon as possible. They have little order, no guards at night, and no scouts by day; they are, therefore, frequently surprized.

Their pride and chief care consist in their horses, which they feed in the best manner; giving them maize, bread, and whatever they can get sometimes even chearing them with opium and balls of flour, stimulated by ginger. They sleep with their bridles in their hands; and are, at all times, prepared for plunder, for battle, or for flight: fighting only for the first, they never engage but when they are superior in numbers. Flight with them is no disgrace; and he who flies the fastest, prides himself the most; and his joy at escape is signified by the manner, in which he caresses his horse. Such being the case, his greatest solicitude in the choice of a horse is swiftness; because, when surprised, he can spring upon his saddle, and be out of sight in an instant. If he loses him, however, the disgrace is indelible. His arms consist of a sword, a spear, and a lance; for his use of fire-arms is but partial. To a life of depredation the Pindarrees attach neither crime nor disgrace; personal interest and grandeur are the only laws they esteem; and to secure either, cruelty, stratagem, and every species of oppression, are esteemed honourable. When one of their chiefs, taken prisoner in the last of their battles with the British forces, first beheld Calcutta, the only sentiment, he expressed to Sir John Malcolm, relative to that fine city, was, that it was a glorious place to pillage!

The Deccan and the Rajpoot states were dreadfully infested by these barbarians; who obtained such an ascendancy over the governments of Scindia and Holkar, that they threatened to establish such a system of annual devastation throughout Hindoostan, as no empire was ever subject to before. Fortunately, however, they were totally incapable of encountering a regular force, to which they attached great power; and of which they consequently lived in great dread. Major Lushington' put a party of three thousand of them to flight with only three hundred and fifty men!

In 1809 they generally invaded a country or province in parties, varying from one to four thousand each. Their arrival and depredations were frequently the only heralds of their approach. They carried nothing but their arms. They had no tents or baggage of any sort; their saddle-cloths were their beds; they never halted but to refresh themselves, or to indulge their lust and avarice; and their subsistence arose out of the plunder of the day. Their movements being exceedingly rapid and uncertain, it was a subject of no little difficulty to way-lay them; they could only, therefore, be caught by surprise. They retired with the same rapidity as they approached; and what they consumed was frequently of more value, than what they took away, for nothing escaped them; and what they did not want they burned, broke, or destroyed, in one way or another. Ruin and desolation marked their footsteps; and they indulged their propensities, in respect to women, to a most frightful extent; and 1 Official Papers, Dec. 27, 1816.

when they had gratified their brutal passions, they not unfrequently murdered their innocent and helpless victims, as rewards for their shrieks and cries. And, to crown the whole, when they had plundered a village, and polluted its inhabitants, they set fire to the buildings: thus leaving the unfortunate survivors alike destitute of house, of food, and of purity.

The chief season for their depredations was that, in which the crops were ripe; and thus the husbandmen were robbed of the fruits of their labour, at the time in which they expected to reap them. Every road was comparatively easy to them; as they marched without guns or baggage: and as they carried terror and destruction wherever they marched, so great was the horror they inspired, that one of the villages' of the Deccan, hearing of their approach, unanimously resolved to sacrifice their families, rather than submit to the ravishment of their wives and children. The Pindarrees approached; a battle ensued; and the villagers being overpowered by numbers, they set fire to their dwellings, and perished with their neighbours and families in one general conflagration.

In one excursion of twelve days, five thousand of these marauders plundered and polluted part of three British provinces. In this assault they robbed six thousand two hundred and three houses; and burnt two hundred and sixty-nine to the ground: one hundred and eighty

1 Ainavale. Vide Dalzell's Dispatch to the Secretary at Madras, March 18, 1816. Letter from Ongole, March 20, 1816.

? Answer to a Report drawn up by the Madras Government, April 22, 1818.

two persons also were murdered; five hundred and five wounded; and three thousand six hundred and three subjected to the torture. The property lost and destroyed was valued at two hundred and fifty-five thousand nine hundred and fifty-six star pagodas. These bands became, at length, so numerous, that their force consisted of no less than thirty thousand men ;' part of whom were in the secret, if not open, service of Scindia; and part in that of Holkar. They were to be heard of in all quarters. The Marquis of Hastings, Governor-general of India, saw ample necessity, therefore, of suppressing, if not entirely destroying, these marauders, who were as dastardly, as they were cruel. By a series of masterly movements, the Pindarree bands were surrounded, and so entirely intersected by a simultaneous movement, at all points, that they were prevented all possibility of escape. The chiefs were, therefore, taken prisoners; and in one campaign annihilated, as it were, from the face of the earth. In this campaign of only three months, conceived in wisdom and executed with vigour, the entire country of Hindoostan was reduced to the authority of the British empire. A dominion more extensive than Aurengzebe possessed, even in the zenith of his power: for it comprizes an extent of country, reaching from the Himalah mountains to the Indus; and from the river Sutlese to the Cape Comorin;-an area containing seventy millions of subjects;

1 Debates, House of Lords, March 2, 1819.

• House of Commons, March 1, 1819. Major Fitzclarence compares their ravages to those of an army of locusts. Journal, p. 3..

all of whom are kept in subjection by thirty thousand British soldiers. If India, therefore, has gained little by the prowess of British arms, it has at least gained this; that a predatory force has been obliterated, of whom it has justly been said in the British parliament,' that there was no violence, they did not perpetrate; and no degree of human suffering, they did not inflict. Rapine, rape, murder, and every species of atrocity and torture, were the constant results of every enterprize; and the constant attendants of every

success.

CHAPTER III.

To contrast and variety of climate has been attributed the principal lines and shades of national characters. Mons. Denina, in a paper preserved in the memoirs of the Berlin academy; and Tasso, in his parallel between France and Italy; have given it as their decided opinion, that a country, marked with gentle eminences, and gradually rising mountains, are the most remarkable for men of genius, talents, and learning. Vitruvius and Vegetius3 attribute to climate an influence on the temper and constitution of men: to the same influence Servius* refers the subtlety of the Africans, the fickleness of the Greeks, and the poverty of genius in the ancient

1 Debates, House of Lords, March 2; House of Commons, March 1, 1819. 2 Lib. vi.

> De Re Militari, lib. i. c. 2.

4 In notis Æneid. vi. v. 724.