e agility of some
of the Natives in the exercise of the lance; they are generally good
horsemen, and at full speed will throw the lance, dismount to recover it,
and remount, often without stirrups, with a celerity inconceivable. I have
seen them at these exercises with surprise, remembering the little
activity they exhibit in their ordinary habits.

The Indian bow and arrow has greatly diminished as a weapon of defence in
modern times; but all practise the use of the bow, as they fancy it opens
the chest and gives ease and grace to the figure; things of no trifling
importance with the Mussulmaun youth. I have seen some persons seated
practising the bow, who were unable to bear the fatigue of standing; in
those cases, a heavy weight and pulley are attached to the bow, which
requires as much force in pulling as it would require to send an arrow
from sixty to a hundred yards from the place they occupy.[16]

The pellet-bow is in daily use to frighten away the crows from the
vicinity of man's abode; the pellets are made of clay baked in the sun,
and although they do not wound they bruise most desperately. Were it not
for this means of annoying these winged pests, they would prove a perfect
nuisance to the inhabitants, particularly within the confines of a
zeenahnah, where these impudent birds assemble at cooking-time, to the
great annoyance of the cooks, watching their opportunity to pounce upon
anything they may incautiously leave uncovered. I have often seen women
placed as watchers with the pellet-bow, to deter the marauders the whole
time dinner was preparing in the kitchen. The front of these cooking-rooms
are open to the zeenahnah court-yard, neither doors, windows, nor curtains
being deemed necessary, where the smoke has no other vent than through the
open front into the court-yard.

The crows are so daring that they will enter the yard, where any of the
children may be taking their meals (which they often do in preference to
eating them under the confinement of the hall), and frequently seize the
bread from the hands of the children, unless narrowly watched by the
servants, or deterred by the pellet-bow. And at the season of building
their nests, these birds will plunder from the habitations of man,
whatever may be met with likely to make a soft lining for their nests;
often, I am told, carrying off the skull-cap from the children's heads,
and the women's pieces of calico or muslin from their laps when seated in
th