Here the widow of Raja Bahadur, a violent and sanguinary woman, was supreme; and she persuaded the present Raja, a weak old man, to take advantage of the funeral ceremonies to avenge the death of his brother.  He did so; and Bihari, and his three brothers, with above fifty of his relations, were murdered.  The widows of the four brothers were the only members of all the families left alive.  One of them had a son four months old; another one of two years; the four brothers had no other children.  Immediately after the death of their husbands, the two children were snatched from their mothers’ breasts, and threatened with instant death unless their mothers pointed out all their ornaments and other property.  They did so; and the spoilers having got from them property to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand rupees, and been assured that there was no more, threw the children over the high wall, by which they were dashed to pieces.  The poor widows were tendered as wives to four sweepers, the lowest of all low castes; but the tribe of sweepers would not suffer any of its members to take the widows of men of such high caste and station as wives, notwithstanding the tempting offer of five hundred rupees as a present, and a village in rent-free tenure.[8] I secured a promise while at Tehri that these poor widows should be provided for, as they had, up to that time, been preserved by the good feeling of a little community of the lowest of castes, on whom they had been bestowed as a punishment worse than death, inasmuch as it would disgrace the whole class to which they belonged, the Parihar Rajputs.[9]

Tehri is a wretched town, without one respectable dwelling-house tenanted beyond the palace, or one merchant, or even shopkeeper of capital and credit.  There are some tolerable houses unoccupied and in ruins; and there are a few neat temples built as tombs, or cenotaphs, in or around the city, if city it can be called.  The stables and accommodations for all public establishments seem to be all in the same ruinous state as the dwelling-houses.  The revenues of the state are spent in feeding Brahmans and religious mendicants of all kinds; and in such idle ceremonies as those at which the Raja and all his court have just been assisting—­ceremonies which concentrate for a few days the most useless of the people of India, the devotee followers (Bairagis) of the god Vishnu, and tend to no purpose, either useful or ornamental, to the state or to the people.

This marriage of a stone to a shrub, which takes place every year, is supposed to cost the Raja, at the most moderate estimate, three lakhs of rupees a year, or one-fourth of his annual revenue.[10] The highest officers of which his government is composed receive small beggarly salaries, hardly more than sufficient for their subsistence; and the money they make by indirect means they dare not spend like gentlemen, lest the Raja might be tempted to take their lives in order to get hold of it.  All his feudal barons