The old man and I got into a conversation upon the characters of different governments, and their effects upon the people; and he said that bad governments would sooner or later be always put down by the deity; and quoted this verse, which I took down with my pencil: 

    Tulasi, gharib na satae,
    Buri gharib ki hai;
    Mari khal ke phunk se
    Loha bhasm ho jae.

’Oh, Raja Tulasi! oppress not the poor; for the groans of the wretched bring retribution from heaven.  The contemptible skin (in the smith’s bellows) in time melts away the hardest iron.’[13]

On leaving our tents in the morning, we found the ground all round white with hoar frost, as we had found it for several mornings before;[14] and a little canary bird, one of the two which travelled in my wife’s palankeen, having, by the carelessness of the servants been put upon the top without any covering to the cage, was killed by the cold, to her great affliction.  All attempts to restore it to life by the warmth of her bosom were fruitless.

On the 7th[15] we came nine miles to Bamhauri over a soil still basaltic, though less rich, reposing upon syenite, which frequently rises and protrudes its head above the surface, which is partially and badly cultivated, and scantily peopled.  The silent signs of bad government could not be more manifest.  All the extensive plains, covered with fine long grass, which is rotting in the ground from want of domestic cattle or distant markets.  Here, as in every other part of Central India, the people have a great variety of good spontaneous, but few cultivated, grasses.  They understand the character and qualities of these grasses extremely well.  They find some thrive best in dry, and some in wet seasons; and that of inferior quality is often prized most because it thrives best when other kinds cannot thrive at all, from an excess or a deficiency of rain.  When cut green they all make good hay, and have the common denomination of ‘sahia’.  The finest of these grasses are two which are generally found growing spontaneously together, and are often cultivated together-’kel’ and ‘musel’; the third ‘parwana’; fourth ‘bhawar’, or ‘guniar’; fifth ’saina’.[16]

Notes: 

1.  Spelled Siedpore in the author’s text.

2.  More correctly Brindaban (Vrindavana).  The name originally belongs to one of the most sacred spots in India, situated near Mathura (Muttra) on the Jumna, and the reputed scene of the dalliance between Krishna and the milkmaids (Gopis); also associated with the legend Rama.

3.  Twenty-seven miles north-west of Tehri in the Orchha State.