204 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



Britain. There are about four hundred of these 

 chiefs altogether ; and though some of them are no 

 better than petty proprietors, others, such as the 

 Nawab of Junaghar and the Jam of Kaoanagar, have 

 really small kingdoms, and what would have been 

 counted as such even in Europe ten years ago. In 

 addressing these chiefs in 1867, Sir Bartle Frere, the 

 then Governor of Bombay, said : " Some of your 

 chiefs can show pedigrees which run back for nine- 

 teen centuries and extend over forty generations. 

 And this at least is certain, that you have in 

 Kathiawar landed proprietors who tilled land in that 

 province while the descendants of the Caesars still 

 ruled over the Roman empire ; and many who be- 

 lieve, with some show of reason, that their ancestors 

 had fields of their own to till in the same province 

 when Porus met Alexander on the frontier of India." 

 I saw some very ancient - looking individuals in 

 Kathiawar, but whether they had actually tilled land 

 there a thousand years ago, I am not prepared to 

 affirm. There is no doubt, however, that many 

 of the proprietors can show credible genealogies of 

 immense antiquity ; and the antiquity of the land 

 settlements of the peninsula must be taken into 

 account in order to form an idea of the character 

 of the people. It must be noted, also, that there 

 has been a great infusion of races into Kathiawar, 

 not only of Negroes, Arabs, and Beloochees from the 

 shores of the Arabian Sea, but also from many parts 



