456 



who received it from the villages every evening; and early on the 

 ensuing morning weighed the cotton gathered the preceding day 

 to the brokers, by whom it was immediately packed in bales for 

 foreign markets. As these brokers, and native cotton-dealers of 

 every description, play into each others hand, and use all possible 

 means to cheat an European, we found it very difficult to coun- 

 teract their cunning. One of their principal frauds was that of 

 exposing the cotton, spread out on cow-dung floors, to the nightly 

 dews, and then weighing it early the next morning in a moist state 

 to the receivers. This occasioned a great lo>s in the weight of a 

 candy, containing five hundred and sixty pounds, when it became 

 dry. To prevent it as much as possible, I often paid an unex- 

 pected visit at day-break to at least a hundred of these small 

 cotton-merchants; when, by placing a handful of the cotton taken 

 up indiscriminately from the floor, upon the cheek, it was easy to 

 discover whether it had been exposed to the dew to increase its 

 weight. Like Gideon's fleece, spread upon the floor, with an honest 

 dealer the cotton was perfectly dry; if in the hands of a ropue, 

 you might like him wring out a bowlful of water. 



Notwithstanding so many late encomiums on the Hindoo cha- 

 racter by respectable writers, it will I believe be generally allowed 

 by those who have dealt much with Banians, and merchants in 

 the large trading-towns of India, that their moral character can- 

 not be held in high estimation; since they are guilty of all the arts 

 of craftiness, duplicity, and cunning that can be practised without 

 the pale of the law. A modern writer has asserted that " no 

 " people ever exhibited more suavity of manners, or more mild- 



