CHAPTER XXXIV. 



I now enter upon the painful subject of my last letter from In- 

 dia; it was written from Bombay at the end of the year 1783, 

 when I had taken a final leave of Baroche, Dhuboy, and all the 

 interesting scenes in Guzerat. They then no longer belonged to 

 the English; the British flag, the security of liberty and property 

 in that delightful province, no more waved on her ramparts, and 

 the peasants on her luxuriant plains were abandoned to Mahratta 

 despotism. Ill-fated people, who only experienced the mildness of 

 our laws, and tasted the sweets of freedom, to find the cup of slavery 

 more bitter ! 



I shall not discuss the oriental politics at that period. The 

 East India Company had been engaged for several years in an 

 expensive war with the Mahrattas and Hyder Ally Khan, the two 

 most formidable powers in Hindostan. In the beginning of 1783 

 the Supreme government of Bengal concluded a peace with the 

 peshwa of the Mahrattas, through the mediation of Mhadajee 

 Sindia, one of the great sirdars, or chieftains, of the empire; a man 

 whose rise in life was so extraordinary as to merit a particular 

 recital. 



When Bajee-Row became peshwa, as particularly mentioned 



