82 DIARY OF A SPORTSMAN NATURALIST 



What extraordinary incidents this old place must have 

 witnessed tenanted by its horde of dark-skinned daring and 

 treacherous occupants. What forays they must have set 

 out on from the very gate I now looked upon clad in their 

 shirts of chain mail, steel morions inlaid with gold or silver, 

 great steel gauntlets and armed with their quaintly shaped 

 tulwars and other weapons and beautifully made bucklers. 



The business and method of life were very similar to our 

 own marauding days, but the setting so extraordinarily 

 different. 



The chieftain who was reported to have built the present 

 fort, one Mahommed Khan, had a history which must have 

 been quite common at the period. A junior Commander 

 at one of the Courts of a Feudatory State on the Guzerat 

 side, he was noted both for his great personal beauty, 

 enormous strength, and a wonderful command of his 

 weapons. Becoming enamoured of the only daughter of 

 the Ruler who disapproved of his suit, he assembled his 

 own command around him, by whom it is almost needless 

 to say he was worshipped, and in most daring fashion 

 carried the lady off. Tradition relates that she was more 

 than half willing. After days and weeks of hard riding to 

 escape an energetic pursuit the party halted one night, 

 having got hopelessly lost, on the banks of the little river 

 flowing round the foot of the small spur on which the ruins 

 now stand. Next morning Mahommed Khan was so struck 

 with the natural features of the position from a defensive 

 point of view that he decided to remain there and build a 

 fort. He appears to have erected a very powerful strong- 

 hold, upon whose ruins I now gazed ; to have rapidly 

 subdued the surrounding country and to have become a 

 powerful robber chieftain. History or legend also credits 

 his fair lady with presenting him with a fine race of sturdy 

 offspring who in due course extended the parental domain. 



What was she like I wondered, that slip of a girl who 

 fired this man to risk far worse than death for her sake, 

 had he been overtaken by the enraged Ruler. And was 

 she content ! She had a man at any rate for her husband, 

 and that is what the sex mostly likes. Where were her 

 quarters in this old ruin I wondered small trace of them 

 were now to be seen. 



As I sat musing and smoking on top of one of the only 

 entire pieces of battlement my attendant, who had climbed 



