485 



these savages against me; and by experience I found that the 

 severity of the Mahratta government was more efficacious in con- 

 trolling these people than British lenity. Not long after my arri- 

 val at Dhuboy, sitting at dinner with a young gentleman lately 

 arrived from England, the chopdar introduced some peasants 

 bearing a dish covered with a napkin, which, supposing it to con- 

 tain a peacock, or part of an antelope, I desired might be put on 

 the table. I attempt not to describe our horror and astonishment 

 when, on lifting up the cloth, we beheld a man's head just decol- 

 lated. It was the head of a savage Gracia killed during the pre- 

 ceding night by the vertunnees, or armed men of a village, where 

 a party of them had made a descent to commit robbery and 

 murder. 



Nothing shocks humanity more than to read of Marc Antony's 

 delight at seeing- the heads of Cicero, and the noble Romans he 

 had proscribed, except the idea of the two princesses in Palestine, 

 a mother and a daughter; the one presenting, and the other re- 

 ceiving, the head of the Baptist in a charger. True it is, that the 

 Persian monarchs heaped up pyramids of heads at their palace 

 gates, and a king of Israel received them in baskets, in the 

 same manner as Hyder Ally and his son Tippoo were regaled at 

 breakfast with avesselful of the ears and noses of our poor sepoys 

 who fell into their hands. My young friend and myself were so 

 disgusted by the sight of a single head, and so much did it mili- 

 tate against British feeling, that I immediately issued the most 

 public orders to prohibit such transactions in future. With con- 

 cern I found this did not prove an act of mercy to the villages, 



