the people themselves appeared to be so little acquainted with military discipline, that they marched like a disorderly rabble, every one having, instead of his target, a cock, some tobacco, or other merchandise of the like kind, which he took that opportunity to bring down to sell, and few or none of their cartridge-boxes were furnished with either powder or ball, though a piece of paper was thrust into the hole to save appearances.  We saw a few swivel guns and pateraros at the town-house, and a great gun before it; but the swivels and pateraros lay out of their carriages, and the great gun lay upon a heap of stones, almost consumed with rust, with the touch-hole downwards, possibly to conceal its size, which might perhaps be little less than that of the bore.

We could not discover that among these people there was any rank of distinction between the raja and the landowners:  The land-owners were respectable in proportion to their possessions; the inferior ranks consist of manufacturers, labouring poor, and slaves.  The slaves, like the peasants in some parts of Europe, are connected with the estate, and both descend together:  But though the landowner can sell his slave, he has no other power over his person, not even to correct him, without the privity and approbation of the raja.  Some have five hundred of these slaves, and some not half a dozen:  The common price of them is a fat hog.  When a great man goes out, he is constantly attended by two or more of them:  One of them carries a sword or hanger, the hilt of which is commonly of silver, and adorned with large tassels of horse hair; and another carries a bag which contains betel, areca, lime, and tobacco.  In these attendants consists all their magnificence, for the raja himself has no other mark of distinction.

The chief object of pride among these people, like that of a Welchman, is a long pedigree of respectable ancestors, and indeed a veneration for antiquity seems to be carried farther here than in any other country:  Even a house that has been well inhabited for many generations, becomes almost sacred, and few articles either of use or luxury bear so high a price as stones, which having been long sat upon, are become even and smooth:  Those who can purchase such stones, or are possessed of them by inheritance, place them round their houses, where they serve as seats for their dependants.[110]

[Footnote 110:  The specification of the Welch here is very vulgar, and the more so, as obviously sarcastic.  Deeper or more scientific observation would have led Dr Hawkesworth to some general principle which produces a love of ancestry in all our species.  Mr Gibbon has very expressively described it, in the beginning of the memoirs of his own life, to which the reader is referred.  Nothing is less becoming a philosopher, than wittily pointing out national peculiarities, without taking the least pains to discover the foundations on which they are built, or connecting them with circumstances and principles common to mankind.  Every thing, in fact, will seem anomalous and insulated in the history of different nations, if it is not distinctly recollected that human nature is the same throughout the globe which it inhabits, and is merely modified by external causes.—­E.]