260 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



affairs in which something of the kind was specially 

 needed. The custom remains, as innumerable customs 

 do, though the special necessity for it has disappeared. 

 My reader may thus understand how he would be 

 placed if he had been born among the Kathis. If 

 his elder brother died and left a widow, as he would 

 be pretty sure to do if only fourteen years old, my 

 gentle reader would have to take that wife to his bed 

 and board even though she might be over sixty : if 

 his own wife died, his movable property and all her 

 children would be taken away from him. In the 

 leaving of the brood-mare, we may perhaps see a trace 

 of Tartar origin. 



The next Kathiawar state I went into was that of 

 Gondul, which was under English management, the 

 chief being a minor of five or six years old. The 

 most noticeable results of this guardianship were two 

 or three miles of good road, a well-ordered jail, a 

 good schoolhouse, and a reading-room connected with 

 the schoolhouse, and supplied with native and other 

 papers and a few books. Dajabhai Siinderlal, the 

 manager of the state for the Bombay Government, 

 was doing well in these respects ; but the principle 

 involved in such appointments is open to serious 

 question. I had an interview with the little Thakor, 

 as the infant chief of the state was called, and found 

 him to be a weakly but intelligent child. It was 

 interesting, but almost painful, to see him go through 

 the usual forms of Indian reception under the sug- 



