Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c43.t1.209

v3.c43.t1.209

Khajuri, October 2.—Left my sick friends this morning to nurse each other, and having an important duty to perform at Mandalgarh, which is out of the direct route, appointed a rendezvous where I shall meet them when this work is over. I was for the first time compelled to shut myself up in my palki; incessant fever and ague for the last two months have disorganized a frame which has had to struggle with many of these attacks. We are now in what is termed the Karar, for so the tract is named on both banks of the Banas to the verge of the plateau; and my journey was through a little nation of robbers by birth and profession; but their kamthas (bows) were unstrung, and their arrows rusting in the quiver. Well may our empire in the east be called one of opinion, when a solitary individual of Britain, escorted by a few of Skinner’s Horse, may journey through the valley of Khajuri, where, three short years ago, every crag would have concealed an ambush prepared to plunder him! At present, I could by signal have collected four thousand bowmen around me, to protect or to plunder; though the Minas, finding that their rights are respected, are subsiding into regular tax-paying subjects, and call out with their betters “Atal Raj!” (“May your sway be everlasting!”) We had a grand convocation of the Mina Naiks, and, in the Rana’s name, I distributed crimson turbans and scarfs; for as through our mediation the Rana had just recovered the district of Jahazpur, he charged me with its settlement. I found these Minas true children of nature, who for the first time seemed to feel they were received within the pale of society, instead of being considered as outcasts. “The heart must leap kindly back to kindness,” is a sentiment as powerfully [675] felt by the semi-barbarians of the Karar as by the more civilized habitants of other climes.