A EUX THROUGH KATIIIAWAK. 199 



found very useful. The chiefs of Kathiawar are 

 really exceedingly hospitable, after their own time- 

 honoured fashions, but these do not meet all the 

 wants of an Englishman : a sense of propriety for- 

 bids one drawing upon that hospitality more than 

 .the circumstances justify ; and it needs no satirical 

 turn of mind to be aware that, in all parts of the 

 world, hospitality is most freely accorded to those 

 who are most independent of it. 



It is pleasant in the cool month of January to find 

 one's self running up the coast of Western India in 

 a comfortable steamer, with an entirely new district 

 of country in prospect. Three weeks, in old times, 

 would have been a very fair run at this season in a 

 ]>att!inar from Bombay to Surat, on the mainland 

 entrance of the Gulf of Cambay ; but now in less 

 than twenty-four hours we find ourselves anchored 

 on the other side of the gulf, beside the little Portu- 

 guese island of Diu, close to the great Kathiawar 

 peninsula. There is something attractive to some 

 minds in these decaying remnants of the Portuguese 

 colonial empire such as Diu and Goa on the Indian 

 coast, and Macao on that of China. They are dear 

 to the same tone of mind which made Byron find a 

 congenial home in Pisa, Venice, and Ravenna. Some- 

 thing of the heroism and glory of the past still lingers 

 about them, affects the very air, and prevents the 

 meanness of their present becoming the meanness of 

 poor places which have had no past. But probably, 



