183 7. J Lodiana to Mithankot by the Satlaj river. 195 



addicted to predatory habits. The Dogre and Dogre Badela are 

 chiefly confined to the Mamdot territory and higher up. At Loadi-ke, 

 below Mamdot they are succeeded by the Wattu Karral Chishti and 

 other branches of the Jat tribes, descendants of the Rajpi'it shepherds, 

 who formerly inhabited the country on the Ravi between Multdn and 

 Lahdr. These people still lead a wandering pastoral life, seldom 

 building anything but temporary sheds, and may fairly challenge the 

 name applied to them of " khdna baddsh." They are a race inured to 

 every hardship, ill fed and worse clothed, but capable of enduring 

 great fatigue under every privation. They are much celebrated fur 

 the length and rapidity of their journeys on foot in their nightly 

 excursions to carry off cattle from neighboring territories. Nothing 

 in their appearance would indicate their possessing a superior share 

 of physical strength or activity ; they are tall spare men, generally 

 ill made, and without any great shew of bone or muscle. If their 

 hardiness of constitution is any where perceptible, it is in their harsh 

 swarthy features, which though not pleasing are manly. 



These tribes, even in the best days of the Mogul empire, were 

 never brought into any proper subjection or made to feel the influence 

 of a well-ordered government. They continued embroiled in feuds 

 among themselves, in the settlement of which the arms of autho- 

 rity seldom interposed. A system of sdlahang, or retaliation, than 

 which nothing can be conceived more productive of crime and gene- 

 ral disorder, has prevailed among them from time immemorial. This 

 system authorizes the redressing an injury not only on the person 

 or property of the injurer, but on any of his relations, friends or neigh- 

 bors whom chance may throw into the power of the injured party; con- 

 sequently a few disorderly persons have it in their power to involve the 

 whole country in their quarrels. The original cause of their feud is 

 generally a dispute as to the right of pasture, or a few buffaloes may 

 have strayed from the herds of one village to those of another. This 

 leads to reprisals, in which blood is sometimes shed, and blood calls 

 for blood long after the original cause of dispute has ceased to be 

 remembered. If this was the state of affairs when the country on 

 both sides of the river was under one authority, we may judge of what 

 it must be now that the river separates two hostile powers. 



The system of sdlahang which was before confined to villages near 

 each other, now extends along the whole line of the opposite banks of 

 the river. Instead of a few buffaloes stealthily abstracted during the 

 night by ten or twelves herdsmen, villages are now openly attacked 

 and plundered at noon-day by gangs of from one hundred to two 

 2 c 2 



