‘I have no doubt’, replied he, ’that the cures which the people attribute to the spirit of Hardaul Lala often arise merely from the firmness of their faith (itikad) in the efficacy of their offerings; and that any other ceremonies, that should give to their minds the same assurance of recovery, would be of great advantage in cases of epidemic diseases.  I remember a singular instance of this,’ said he.  ’When Jeswant Rao Holkar was flying before Lord Lake to the banks of the Hyphasis,[8] a poor trooper of one of his lordship’s irregular corps, when he tied the grain-bag to his horse’s mouth, said ’Take this in the name of Jeswant Rao Holkar, for to him you and I owe all that we have.’  The poor man had been suffering from an attack of ague and fever; but from that moment he felt himself relieved, and the fever never returned.  At that time this fever prevailed more generally among the people of Hindustan than any I have ever known, though I am now an old man.  The speech of the trooper and the supposed result soon spread; and others tried the experiment with similar success, and it acted everywhere like a charm.  I had the fever myself, and, though by no means a superstitious man, and certainly no lover of Jeswant Rao Holkar, I tried the experiment, and the fever left me from that day.  From that time, till the epidemic disappeared, no man, from the Nerbudda to the Indus, fed his horse without invoking the spirit of Jeswant Rao, though the chief was then alive and well.  Some one had said he found great relief from plunging into the stream during the paroxysms of the fever; others followed the example, and some remained for half an hour at a time, and the sufferers generally found relief.  The streams and tanks throughout the districts between the Ganges and Jumna became crowded, till the propitiatory offering to the spirit of the living Jeswant Rao Holkar were [sic] found equally good, and far less troublesome to those who had horses that must have got their grain, whether in Holkar’s name or not.’

There is no doubt that the great mass of those who had nothing but their horses and their good blades to depend upon for their subsistence did most fervently pray throughout India for the safety of this Maratha chief, when he fled before Lord Lake’s army; for they considered that, with his fall, the Company’s dominion would become everywhere securely established, and that good soldiers would be at a discount. ’Company ke amal men kuchh rozgar nahin hai,’—­’There is no employment in the Company’s dominion,’ is a common maxim, not only among the men of the sword and the spear, but among those merchants who lived by supporting native civil and military establishments with the luxuries and elegancies which, under the new order of things, they have no longer the means to enjoy.