108 
PANWELL. 
presented a cheering prospect by their healthy state, and even the 
mountains were covered with verdure, except where their smooth 
surface was broken by rocky pinnacles rising to a great height. The 
clouds floated around them, and occasionally, in part, concealed 
them from our view, which greatly improved the scene. High cul- 
tivation and picturesque scenery have no where in India been so 
perfectly united. 
The tide had just turned as we reached the landing-place near 
the village of Panwell. I was extremely shocked at discovering the 
vultures and Paria dogs disputing over the body of a poor wretch, 
whom the recent famine had hurried to a better world. Captain 
Young employs twelve men to bury the bodies, at an expense of 
forty-five rupees per month. They have sometimes performed 
this office to thirty in a day: during the rainy monsoon, the 
average was twenty-five. The want of rain had caused a scarcity, 
which had been heightened into a famine by the devastations of the 
Mahratta war. Holcar and Scindiah laid waste whole provinces, 
and through a vast extent of country left neither tree nor habi- 
tation. The British power has hitherto protected the Guzerat, 
Cokan, and the neighbouring poor of Bombay. It has even gone 
farther, and has daily fed twelve thousand people from the stores 
of rice procured from Bengal. 
They are now reaping the first crops, but poverty still renders 
numbers the victims of famine. Captain Young is hardly settled, 
and his habitation is new ; it is situated on a rock, which in the 
rains, is an island. His business has been to forward all the stores 
for our garrison at Poonah, which would otherwise have been almost 
starving. These proceedings have been fortunate for the poor, as; 
