ing able to give us any dinner at
all. At last we managed to get a tent, closed at every crevice to
keep out the dust, for a cook-room; and they were thus able to
preserve their master's credit, which, no doubt, according to their
notions, depended altogether on the quality of his dinner.

Notes:

1. The place is a small town in the Gurgaon District, Panjab.

2. The term 'uncovenanted' may require explanation for readers not
familiar with the details of Indian administration. The Civil Service
of India, commonly called Indian Civil Service, which supplies most
of the higher administrative and judicial officers, used to be known
as the Covenanted service, because its members sign a covenant with
the Secretary of State. All the other departmental services--Public
Works, Postal and the rest--were grouped together as uncovenanted. In
accordance with the Report of the Public Service Commission (1886-7)
the terms 'covenanted' and 'uncovenanted' have been disused.

3. The text refers to what was known as the 'customs hedge'. Before
the establishment of the British supremacy each of the innumerable
native jurisdictions levied transit duties on many kinds of goods at
each of its frontiers, to the infinite vexation of traders. Such
duties were gradually abolished in British territory, and few, if
any, are now enforced by native states. Salt cannot be manufactured
in British India without a licence, and the Salt (formerly called
Inland Customs) Department is charged with the duty of preventing the
manufacture or sale of illicit salt. In its later developments the
Customs hedge was used for the collection of the salt duty only. Sir
John Strachey took a leading part in its abolition. To secure the
levy of the duty on salt, he writes, 'there grew up gradually a
monstrous system, to which it would be almost impossible to find a
parallel in any tolerably civilized country. A Customs line was
established which stretched across the whole of India, which in 1869
extended from the Indus to the Mahanadi in Madras, a distance of
2,300 miles; and it was guarded by nearly 12,000 men and petty
officers, at an annual cost of L162,000. It would have stretched from
London to Constantinople. . . . It consisted principally of an
immense impenetrable hedge of thorny trees and bushes . . . A similar
line, 280 miles in length, was maintained in the north-eastern part
of the Bombay Presidency from Dohud to the Runn of Cutch.' In 1878
the salt dut