Geography of the Hhnalaj/ah Mountains. 21 



Wars and misgovernment, attended by famine and pestilence, 

 are the causes usually assigned for this by the people them- 

 selves. During even the common occurrence of a scanty crop, 

 the difficulty with which the petty states in the interior could 

 supply themselves from more fertile countries was very great ; 

 the bulky commodities which they had to give in exchange hav- 

 ing to be transported by themselves, from the want of roads 

 and beasts of burden, and across the territories of neighbour- 

 ing chiefs, subjected to innumerable and arbitrary exactions 

 in their transit. So that any temporary pressure of the po- 

 pulation against the available supply of food, has here been 

 invariably productive of crime and misery, unexampled in 

 many other parts of the globe, equally or more sterile in re- 

 spect of resources, but better regulated and more elevated in 

 the scale of moral and intellectual existence. It may be suf- 

 ficient only to mention the facts which have obtruded 

 themselves upon the observations of all British officers em- 

 ployed in these districts, without dwelling upon them, that 

 bloodshed seems to have been a common occurrence in private 

 quarrel between members of the different states ; as also the 

 sale of females among each other, and the exposure of child- 

 ren, particularly the females, not as practised among Raj- 

 poots in different parts of India from family pride, lest, not 

 finding suitable matches, they might degrade themselves by 

 intermarrying with inferiors, but chiefly from the mothers 

 being unable to spare time from their other duties to rear in- 

 fants, likely ultimately only to add to a population increased 

 already beyond its steadily available means of subsistence. 

 Hence also polyandry, common almost throughout the coun- 

 try, particularly the interior and poorer parts of it, which 

 must not only be considered as an evidence of some great de- 

 rangement in the constitution of society, but can hardly be 

 supposed to have any other than a most injurious effect upon 

 the moral character of the people. 



It has been doubted what became of the superfluous fe- 

 males in countries similar to these districts, and Thibet, where 

 polyandry prevails. The practice of exposing or destroying, 

 particularly the female children, and the marts established in 

 the vicinity, in former days, (when such traffic was permitted, ) 



