ianized by the thousand
accidents which influence the fate of battles. A series of successful
aggressions upon their neighbours will commonly give a nation a
notion that they are superior in courage; and pride will make them
attribute this superiority to blood--that is, to an old date. This
was, perhaps, never more exemplified than in the case of the Gurkhas
of Nepal, a small diminutive race of men not unlike the Huns, but
certainly as brave as any men can possibly be. A Gurkha thought
himself equal to any four other men of the hills, though they were
all much stronger; just as a Dane thought himself equal to four
Saxons at one time in Britain. The other men of the hills began to
think that he really was so, and could not stand before him.[6]

We passed many wells from which the people were watering their
fields, and found those which yielded a brackish water were
considered to be much more valuable for irrigation than those which
yielded sweet water. It is the same in the valley of the Nerbudda,
but brackish water does not suit some soils and some crops. On the
8th we reached Fathpur Sikri, which lies about twenty-four miles from
Agra, and stands upon the back of a narrow range of sandstone hills,
rising abruptly from the alluvial plains to the highest, about one
hundred feet, and extends three miles north-north-east and south-
south-west. This place owes its celebrity to a Muhammadan saint, the
Shaikh Salim of Chisht, a town in Persia, who owed his to the
following circumstance:

The Emperor Akbar's sons had all died in infancy, and he made a
pilgrimage to the shrine of the celebrated Muin-ud-din of Chisht, at
Ajmer. He and his family went all the way on foot at the rate of
three 'kos', or four miles, a day, a distance of about three hundred
and fifty miles. 'Kanats', or cloth walls, were raised on each side
of the road, carpets spread over it, and high towers of burnt bricks
erected at every stage, to mark the places where he rested. On
reaching the shrine he made a supplication to the saint, who at night
appeared to him in his sleep, and recommended him to go and entreat
the intercession of a very holy old man, who lived a secluded life
upon the top of the little range of hills at Sikri. He went
accordingly, and was assured by the old man, then ninety-six years of
age, that the Empress Jodh Bai, the daughter of a Hindoo prince,
would be delivered of a son, who would live to a good old age. She
was then pregnant,