nd that he would be swallowed up by Sindhia's greedy army,
were not the sevenfold shield of the Honourable Company spread over
him. His establishments, civil and military, like those of the
Bundelkhand chiefs, are raised from the peasantry and yeomanry or the
country; who all, in consequence, feel an interest in the prosperity
and independent respectability of their chief. On the Gwalior side,
the members of all the public establishments know and feel that it is
we who interpose and prevent their master from swallowing up all his
neighbours, and thereby having increased means of promoting their
interest and that of their friends; and they detest us all most
cordially in consequence. The peasantry of the Gwalior territory seem
to consider their own government as a kind of minotaur, which they
would be glad to see destroyed, no matter how or by whom; since it
gives no lucrative or honourable employment to any of their members,
so as to interest either their pride or their affections; nor throws
back among them for purposes of local advantage any of the produce of
their land and labour which it exacts. It is worthy of remark that,
though the Dholpur chief is peculiarly the creature of the British
Government, and indebted to it for all he has or ever will have, and
though he has never had anything, and never can have, or can hope to
have, anything from the poor pageant of the house of Timur, who now
sits upon the throne of Delhi;[12] yet, on his seal of office he
declares himself to be the slave and creature of that imperial
'warrior for the faith of Islam'. As he abstains from eating the good
fish of the river Chambal to enhance his claim to caste among
Hindoos, so he abstains from acknowledging his deep debt of gratitude
to the Honourable Company, or the British Government, with a view to
give the rust of age to his rank and title. To acknowledge himself a
creature of the British Government were to acknowledge that he was a
man of yesterday; to acknowledge himself the slave of the Emperor is
to claim for his poor veins 'the blood of a line of kings'. The petty
chiefs of Bundelkhand, who are in the same manner especially
dependent on the British Government, do the same thing.

At Dholpur, there are some noble old mosques and mausoleums built
three hundred years ago, in the reign of the Emperor Humayun, by some
great officers of his government, whose remains still rest
undisturbed among them, though the names of their famil