The man who passed off his bad coin at Datiya, passed off more at Dholpur while my advanced people were coming in, pretending that he wanted things for me, and was in a great hurry to be ready with them at my tents by the time I came up.  The bad rupees were brought to a native officer of my guard, who went with the shopkeepers in search of the knave, but he could nowhere be found.  The gates of the town were shut up all night at my suggestion, and in the morning every lodging-house in the town was searched for him in vain—­he had gone on.  I had left some sharp men behind me, expecting that he would endeavour to pass off his bad money immediately after my departure; but in expectation of this he was now evidently keeping a little in advance of me.  I sent on some men with the shopkeepers whom he had cheated to our next stage, in the hope of overtaking him; but he had left the place before they arrived without passing any of his bad coin, and gone on to Agra.  The shopkeepers could not be persuaded to go any further after him, for, if they caught him, they should, they said, have infinite trouble in prosecuting him in our courts, without any chance of recovering from him what they had lost.

On the 29th, we remained at Dholpur to receive and return the visits of the young Raja, or, as he is called, the young Rana, a lad of about fifteen years of age, very plain, and very dull.  He came about ten in the forenoon with a very respectable and well-dressed retinue, and a tolerable show of elephants and horses.  The uniforms of his guards were made after those of our own soldiers, and did not please me half so much as those of the Datiya guards, who were permitted to consult their own tastes; and the music of the drums and fifes seemed to me infinitely inferior to that of the mounted minstrels of my old friend Parichhit.[9] The lad had with him about a dozen old public servants entitled to chairs, some of whom had served his father above thirty years; while the ancestors of others had served his grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and I could not help telling the lad in their presence that ’these were the greatest ornament of a prince’s throne and the best signs and pledges of a good government’.  They were all evidently much pleased at the compliment, and I thought they deserved to be pleased, from the good character they bore among the peasantry of the country.  I mentioned that I had understood the boatmen of the Chambal at Dholpur never caught or ate fish.  The lad seemed embarrassed, and the minister took upon himself to reply that ’there was no market for it, since the Hindoos of Dholpur never ate fish, and the Muhammadans had all disappeared’.  I asked the lad whether he was fond of hunting.  He seemed again confounded, and the minister said that ’his highness never either hunted or fished, as people of his caste were prohibited from destroying life’.  ‘And yet’, said I, ‘they have often showed themselves good soldiers in battle.’  They