talk with the old man
and his ministers, attar of roses and pan were distributed, and we
took our leave to go and visit the old palace, which as yet we had
seen only from a distance. There were only two men besides the Raja,
his son, and ourselves, seated upon chairs. All the other principal
persons of the court sat around cross-legged on the carpet; but they
joined freely in the conversation, I was told by these courtiers how
often the young chief had, during the day, asked when he could have
the happiness of seeing me; and the old chief was told, in my
hearing, how many _good things_ I had said since I came into his
territories, all tending to his honour and my credit. This is a
species of barefaced flattery to which we are all doomed to submit in
our intercourse with these native chiefs; but still, to a man of
sense, it never ceases to be distressing and offensive; for he can
hardly ever help feeling that they must think him a mere child before
they could venture to treat him with it. This is, however, to put too
harsh a construction upon what in reality, the people mean only as
civility; and they, who can so easily consider the grandfathers of
their chiefs as gods, and worship them as such, may be suffered to
treat _us_ as heroes and sayers of good things without offence.[12]

We ascended to the summit of the old palace, and were well repaid for
the trouble by the view of an extremely rich sheet of wheat, gram,
and other spring crops, extending to the north and east, as far as
the eye could reach, from the dark belt of forest, three miles deep,
with which the Raja has surrounded his capital on every side as
hunting grounds. The lands comprised in this forest are, for the most
part, exceedingly poor, and water for irrigation is unattainable
within them, so that little is lost by this taste of the chief for
the sports of the field, in which, however, he cannot himself now
indulge.

On the 19th[13] we left Datiya, and, after emerging from the
surrounding forest, came over a fine plain covered with rich spring
crops for ten miles, till we entered among the ravines of the river
Sindh, whose banks are, like those of all rivers in this part of
India, bordered to a great distance by these deep and ugly
inequalities. Here they are almost without grass or shrubs to clothe
their hideous nakedness, and have been formed by the torrents, which,
in the season of the rains, rush from the extensive plain, as from a
wide ocean, d