that all the real capital left at their command was hardly sufficient to pay back with the stipulated interest one-tenth of what they had borrowed.  The members of those houses who remained in India up to the time of the general wreck were of course reduced to ruin, and obliged to bear the burthen of the odium and indignation which the ruin of so many thousands of confiding constituents brought down upon them.  Since that time the savings of civil and military servants have been invested either in Government securities at a small interest, or in banks, which make their profit in the ordinary way, by discounting bills of exchange, and circulating their own notes for the purpose, or by lending out their money at a high interest of 10 or 12 per cent. to other members of the same services.[15]

On the 16th of January we went on to Horal, ten miles over a plain, with villages numerous and large, and in every one some fine large building of olden times—­sarai, palace, temple, or tomb, but all going to decay.[16] The population much more dense than in any of the native states I have seen; villages larger and more numerous; trade in the transit of cotton, salt, sugar, and grain, much brisker.  A great number of hares were here brought to us for sale at threepence apiece, a rate at which they sell at this season in almost all parts of Upper India, where they are very numerous, and very easily caught in nets.

Notes: 

1.  Kosi is twenty-five miles north-west of Mathura.

2.  The story of the murder of Mr. Fraser is fully detailed post in Chapter 64.  After the execution of Shams-ud-din, the estate of the criminal was taken possession of by Government, and the town of Firozpur is now the head-quarters of a sub-collectorship of the Gurgaon district in the Panjab.  The Delhi territories were placed under the government of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjab in 1858.

3.  The Mewati depredations had gone on for centuries.  The Sultan Balban (Ghias-ud-din, alias Ulugh Khan), who reigned from A.D. 1265- 87, temporarily suppressed them by punishments of awful cruelty, flaying the criminals alive, and so forth.  The Mewatis now supply men to a few robber gangs, but are incapable of mischief on a large scale.

4.  Delhi was most nobly defended against Holkar by a very small force under Lieutenant-Colonel Burn, who ’repelled an assault, and defended a city ten miles in circumference, and which had ever before been given up at the first appearance of an enemy at its gates’.

The battle of Dig was fought on November 13, 1804, by the division under the command of General Fraser on the one side, and Holkar’s infantry and artillery on the other.  ’The 76th led the way, with its wonted alacrity and determination,’ and forced its way into the village in advance of its supports.  The fight resulted in the total defeat of the Marathas, who lost nearly two thousand men, and eighty-seven pieces of cannon.  The English loss also was heavy, amounting to upwards of six hundred and forty killed and wounded, including the brave commander, who was mortally wounded, and survived the victory only a few days.