A MAHRATTA CAMP.

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and agencies of society; and it is adapted to conquer a country, by main force of infinite eating. Few things in the work are more curious, and what we may call outlandish, than the descriptions of this formidable monster, which makes itself sport by destroying the little which it cannot devour :

"Fond of a wandering life, the Mahrattas seem most at home in the camp; the bazaars being supplied with necessaries for the soldiers, and such luxuries as those in a higher station require, they know no wants, and are subject to few restraints; surrounded by their wives and children, they enjoy the pleasures of domestic life; and many of the principal officers keep cheetas, greyhounds, and hawks, trained to hunting, for their amusement on a march, or when encamped in a sporting country.

"Not only the officers and soldiers, but in general the followers of the camp, have their wives and families with them during the march. The women frequently ride astride with one or two children on a bullock, an ass, or a little tattoo horse, while the men walk by the side. On reaching the encampment, the fatigued husband lies down on his mat, and the wife commences her duties. She first shampoos her husband, and fans him to repose; she then shampoos the horse, rubs him down, and gives him provender; takes some care of the ox which has carried her stores, and drives off the poor ass to provide for himself. She next lights a fire, dresses rice and curry, or kneads dough for cakes, which are prepared and baked in a simple manner. When the husband awakes, his repast is ready; and having also provided a meal for herself and children, the careful matron occupies the mat, and sleeps till day-break, when all are in motion, and ready for another march.

"Of the Mahratta cavalry, those soldiers who have neither female companions nor servants to attend them, on finishing the march immediately shampoo their own horses, by rubbing the limbs, and bending the joints; which not only refreshes the animals, but enables them to bear fatigue with a smaller quantity of food than would be otherwise necessary.

"Besides the married women, a number of dancing girls and tolerated courtezans attend the camp. Some of the former officiate as choristers in the sacred tents dedicated to the Hindoo gods; many belong to the officers, and others form a common cyprian corps. Children of both sexes accompany the army in the severest marches; they know no home but the camp.

"The number and variety of cattle necessarily attendant on

an Asiatic army is astonishing. There were at least two hundred thousand in the Mahratta camp of every description. The expense of feeding these animals, as also the difficulty of procuring provender, is very great, and their distress for water, in a parched country and a sultry climate, often fatal."

The Peshwa, having drawn to his camp everything of the nature of soldiery that he had any reason to expect, but relying on the English battalion more than on any part of his army, began a movement toward those whom he regarded as his rebel subjects. The dry season being far advanced, and consequently the water in the wells and tanks greatly reduced, the army seldom remained a night in a place without completely exhausting it, leaving the inhabitants to the resources of a "heaven of brass over them, and an earth of iron under them." In some of the positions, all that was contained in these reservoirs was far from sufficing the army itself. Some of the tanks were reduced to the state of a nauseous puddle, in a very short time, by the foremost of the innumerable quadrupeds crowding impetuously into the

water.

"Heat and dust pervaded the camp; fetid smells and swarms of flies, rendered it inconceivably offensive. I can easily suppose the plague of flies was not one of the smallest judgments inflicted on Egypt; few things, not venomous, could be more troublesome than these insects; they entirely covered our food, filled the drinking vessels, and made it difficult to distinguish the colour of a coat."

INDIAN WARFARE.

On reaching a river, the opposite side of which presented the camp of the enemy, the gallant Ragobah and his Mahrattas deemed it much more entertaining to see a detachment of the English sustain and bravely repulse repeated attacks of the enemy's cavalry, than take any part in the action themselves. Several hundreds of the enemy perished, and their army retreated, first cutting down the trees, destroying a village, and burning all the corn and provender they could not carry off:—

"The surrounding plain was covered with putrid carcases and burning ashes. The hot wind wafting from these fetid odours, and dispersing the ashes among the tents, rendered our encampment extremely disagreeable. During the night hyænas, jackals,

and wild beasts of various kinds, allured by the scent, prowled over the field with a horrid noise; and the next morning a multitude of vultures and kites were seen asserting their claim to a share of the dead."

"The dreadful scenes on the field of battle before the sepulture of the dead, and the removal of the wounded, together with the groans of elephants, camels, horses, and oxen, expiring by hundreds, united to the noise of vultures, and screams of other ravenous birds hovering over them, realized the sublime invitation in sacred writ, for the birds of prey to come to the feast of death: Come and gather yourselves together, that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains.'

They again came several times in contact with the enemy, and in one of the conflicts the English suffered severely; a detachment of them being drawn, by the treachery of one of the chieftains in their own Ragobah's army, into a position where they were separated and surrounded. The traitor soon met his deserved fate.

THE BHAUTS OF GUZERAT.

The tribe of people called Bhauts, reside chiefly in the province of Guzerat :

"Like the troubadours and minstrels in Europe, in the days of chivalry, they seem chiefly occupied in repeating verses of their own composition, or selections from the mythological legends of the Hindoos."

Many of them have another mode of living; they offer themselves as security to the different governments for payment of their revenue, and the good behaviour of the zemindars, patels, and public farmers; they also become guarantees for treaties between rival princes, and the performance of bonds by individuals. No security is esteemed so binding or sacred as that of a Bhaut; because, on failure of the obligation, he proceeds to the house of the offending party, and in his presence destroys either himself or one of his family, imprecating the most dreadful vengeance of the gods on the head of him who had compelled them to shed their blood. This is deemed a dire catastrophe; as the Hindoos are taught to believe that the Bhaut's life, to which a superstitious veneration is attached, over and above their common horror of bloodshed, will be demanded from the aggressor by an offended deity; it is, therefore, very uncommon for an obligation to be broken where a Bhaut stands security."

"For this responsibility, the Bhauts receive an annual stipend from the district, village, or individual they guarantee. They

sign their name and place of abode to the agreement; but instead of affixing their seal, as customary among other tribes, they draw the figure of the catarra, or dagger, their usual instrument of death."

"These people claim an exemption from taxes, and are so invincible in their resolution to resist the payment of them, that whole tribes, men, women, and children, will sacrifice their lives rather than submit."

INDIAN RECKLESSNESS OF LIFE.

The readiness to throw life away, so widely displayed by the Indians, combines with many other facts presented in human society, to suggest the melancholy reflection, what an incomparably more extensive willingness there has always been among mankind, to offer their lives in sacrifice to evil than to good. In the great comprehensive record of all lives and deaths, what a stupendous and awful disproportion there will be found between the number of those who have consentingly devoted themselves to death for the interests of adventurers, tyrants, and impostors; in homage to superstition and idolatry; or in deference to human opinion, under the forms of fame, reputation, laws of honour, and the like. and the number of those who have surrendered life in a simple, enlightened devotement to truth, virtue, and the Almighty. There is inexpressible melancholy in the thought, that life-which there is so much in the constitution of nature to make men regard as the most precious of terrestrial possessions-that life, which it has always required a most rare exertion of faith, and conscience, and courage, to expose or surrender for the pure sake of the true God and heaven,-has been yielded up or flung away with the utmost promptitude, by innumerable multitudes, at the requisition of trifles, delusions, and abominations.

How low soever an estimate a Hindoo may entertain of his own life, he is sure to have his brethren adopting his opinion. They will see him lose it, or help him to be rid of it, with all possible coolness of philosophy. The general effect conveyed by our author's very numerous facts, is that there is nothing on earth which the Hindoos regard as of less importance than the lives of their neighbours. The Brahmins especially, with all their pretended and attributed tender solicitudes not to hurt a cow, or even an insect, appear

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to regard the deaths of persons of the inferior castes no more than the dropping of withered leaves from a tree; and would probably feel little more uneasiness in causing their death than in striking a tree to bring its leaves down.

Nevertheless, by the very constitution of man, the sense of obligation to something out of himself, in other words of right and wrong, will absolutely haunt him, and adhere to him in some form or other. And the degree which any people holds in the scale of cultivated intelligence as well as of morality and religion, will be strikingly indicated by the things upon which this sense of obligation fixes the mark and the emphasis of duty and guilt. This Indian population, amid such a dissolution and abandonment of what may be called the primary morals, is, notwithstanding, overrun to an inconceivable degree with conscientious scrupulosities, and is constantly seen in that monstrous combination of functions

"straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel;" and the intrinsically narrow, grovelling quality of their minds is glaringly manifested by the circumstance, that a vast proportion of their superstitions relate to eating. We may readily judge of the elevation of the man, when the religion is that of rice, and butter, and platters.

MUTUAL TOLERATION BETWEEN THE HINDOOS AND

MAHOMOMETANS.

It seems that the tolerance which false religions so well deserve from one another, and which none of them can be so undiscerning as to be betrayed to maintain willingly towards the true, prevails now to a somewhat unaccountable extent between the Hindoos and Mahometans. This degree of complaisance is perhaps not surprising in the disciple of Brahma, whose maxim is, that the various modes of worship practised by the different nations of the earth spring alike from the Deity, and are equally acceptable to him. The insufficient cause assigned by the writer for this relaxation on the part of the Mahometans is, their experience of the impossibility of converting the Hindoos; but we may be sure that no question about that would ever enter into the calculations of a genuine Moslem zealot.