DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15172#0093
chap. in. AUDIENCE OF LEAVE.
59
him my watch before leaving, and sent him a brace
of pistols and a kaleidoscope, with various articles
of European manufacture, with which he was highly
delighted. The crowd was hardly to be penetrated,
but very orderly : they shouted as we approached ;
and nothing seemed to amuse them so much as the
feathers of our hats. " Such cocks !" was literally
the expression. For about 200 yards from the
palace (if I can use such a term for the mud build-
ings of Sinde), there was a street of armed men, and
among them stood thirty or forty persons with hal-
berds, the foresters or huntsmen of the household.
In the evening we again visited the Ameer,
and found him seated on a terrace spread with
Persian carpets, and surrounded, as before, by
his numerous relatives. He made a long address
to me regarding his respect for the British go-
vernment, and said that I had of course learned
his sentiments from his vizier. He looked to our
Mihmandar from Hydrabad, who I found had
been doing every thing in his power to prevent our
meeting at all, and then changed the convers-
ation. The Ameer asked innumerable questions
about England and its power, remarking that we
were not formerly so military a nation; and he had
heard that a few hundred years ago we went naked
and painted our bodies. On our religion he was
very inquisitive; and when I informed him that I
had read the Koran, he made me repeat the
" Kuluma," or creed, in Persian and Arabic, to his
inexpressible delight. He said that our greatness
had risen from a knowledge of mankind, and attend-
59
him my watch before leaving, and sent him a brace
of pistols and a kaleidoscope, with various articles
of European manufacture, with which he was highly
delighted. The crowd was hardly to be penetrated,
but very orderly : they shouted as we approached ;
and nothing seemed to amuse them so much as the
feathers of our hats. " Such cocks !" was literally
the expression. For about 200 yards from the
palace (if I can use such a term for the mud build-
ings of Sinde), there was a street of armed men, and
among them stood thirty or forty persons with hal-
berds, the foresters or huntsmen of the household.
In the evening we again visited the Ameer,
and found him seated on a terrace spread with
Persian carpets, and surrounded, as before, by
his numerous relatives. He made a long address
to me regarding his respect for the British go-
vernment, and said that I had of course learned
his sentiments from his vizier. He looked to our
Mihmandar from Hydrabad, who I found had
been doing every thing in his power to prevent our
meeting at all, and then changed the convers-
ation. The Ameer asked innumerable questions
about England and its power, remarking that we
were not formerly so military a nation; and he had
heard that a few hundred years ago we went naked
and painted our bodies. On our religion he was
very inquisitive; and when I informed him that I
had read the Koran, he made me repeat the
" Kuluma," or creed, in Persian and Arabic, to his
inexpressible delight. He said that our greatness
had risen from a knowledge of mankind, and attend-