THE OUTBREAK AT MULTAN, AND AFTER. 63 



Two more of these ruined castles, all monuments 

 of the taste and grandeur of the Mogul emperors, 

 were visited in the course of Hodson's tour. "That 

 Goth, Ranjit Singh," he writes, " and his followers 

 have as much to answer for in their way as Crom- 

 well and his crop-eared scoundrels in England and 

 Ireland. They seem only to have conquered to 

 destroy : every public work, every castle, road, 

 serai, or avenue, has been destroyed ; the finest 

 mosques turned into powder-magazines and stables, 

 the gardens into cantonments, and the fields into 

 deserts." 



Hodson one day came across an amusing instance 

 of the way in which the Sikhs managed their fiscal 

 affairs. He had been ordered to report on the ac- 

 counts of revenue formerly collected in 180 villages 

 along the Shah-Nahr, or Royal CanaL "By a con- 

 venient mixture of coaxing and threats, compliment 

 and invective, a return was at last effected, by 

 which it appeared that in ordinary cases about 

 one-half the revenue reached the treasury, in some 

 one-third, and in one district nothing ! To my great 

 amusement, when I came to this point, the gallant 

 collector, a long-bearded old Sikh, quietly remarked, 

 ' Yes, Sahib, this was indeed a great place for us 

 entirely.' I said, ' Yes, you villain, you gentry 

 grew fat on robbing your master.' ' Don't call it 

 robbing,' he said ; ' I assure you I wouldn't be 

 dishonest for the world. I never took more than 

 my predecessors did before me.' About the most 

 naive definition of honesty I have had the luck to 

 meet with. I fancy our visit to these nooks and 

 corners of the Punjab has added some £50,000 

 a-year to the revenue." 



