A RUN THROUGH KATHIAAYAR. 225 



name of Zortalabi or black-mail, literally " taking by 

 force," and that, no doubt, was their origin ; but by 

 custom, and being guaranteed to the Xawab by the 

 British Government, they are now legitimate sources 

 of revenue ; and not a few of the nobles of Europe 

 became possessed of property by a similar process. 

 I need only add that the Xawab has about 3000 

 soldiers, horse and foot; for the character of his 

 state, in so far as I can give any idea of it, will come 

 out best incidentally in the descriptions of what I saw. 

 Much of the gaiety of Jiinaghar consisted in 

 evening parties of a kind unknown in Belgravia, 

 and I was a guest at several of these, given by 

 Bhauaddm, the brother-in-law of the Xawab, Lak- 

 shmi Shankar, the son of a former Dewan, and 

 others. Some of the principal men of Jiinaghar 

 were alwaj^s present at these parties, and the conver- 

 sation turned on subjects both trivial and important. 

 The chief amusement was singing, in Persian, by 

 Xautch girls, and their dancing, if slight and 

 measured movements could be called by that name. 

 There was not even impropriety in the performances 

 I witnessed, and to have watched them long would 

 have been tiresome in the extreme. No doubt 

 Xautch girls are capable of highly improper dancing 

 as well as improper singing, and possibly, later on in 

 the evening there may have been something of that 

 kind ; but, as a rule, the nautching an Englishman 

 sees in India is excessively dull, and one would re- 

 VOL. v. P 



