Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v3.c43.t1.251

v3.c43.t1.251

Rāsmi,² October 23.—The direct or usual route is thirteen and a half miles, but as I made a circuit by Marauli, it was fifteen. Had I taken the common route, I should have followed the Banas the whole way ; as it was, for the last half I skirted its low banks, its limpid stream flowing gently to the north-east. Found the cultivation considerably increased compared with last year ; but it is still a desert, overgrown with grass and brushwood, in which these little cultivated oases are " few and far between." Marauli was thriving in the midst of ruin, with fifty-seven ploughs at work ; there were but twelve when I entered Mewar. Rasmi has also seventy families instead of the twenty I found ; and in a few years I hope to see them greatly increased. We had some delicious trout from the Banas, some of them equal to what we caught last year at Pahona, the largest of which weighed seventy-three rupees, or about two pounds, and near seventeen inches long by nine in girth. My friend Tom David Steuart was more successful than we were in getting them to rise at the fly ; in revenge we took them, unsportsmanlike, in a net. This appears to be the season for eating them.