WANDIWASH. 
37 
victory, thanking him at the same time for the sight 
of a battle such as they had never before witnessed. 
Wandiwash, with the adjacent territory, is now 
comprehended in the southern division of the Madras 
collectorate. On arriving at this town we took shelter 
in one of the gateways of the fort, which, with the 
walls of our tents, we contrived to render tolerably 
habitable for a night, and except for the occasional visi- 
tation of a few bandicoots,* we should have had no- 
thing to complain of; but these creatures, towards 
which I have always felt an invincible disgust, con- 
siderably abridged our slumbers. The fort which 
surrounds this dismal town was in a most ruinous 
condition, and manned by about half a dozen naked, 
half-starved wretches, who appeared like so many 
grim warlocks ; indeed they seemed to be scarcely so 
near akin to humanity, so “ villainously ill-favoured” 
were they, and forbidding. They were fakeers or 
houseless vagrants ; glad to resort to any place, how- 
ever dilapidated and comfortless, so long as it could 
afford them a temporary shelter. 
Upon quitting Wandiwash the following morning, 
we found the country sufficiently pleasant, though, 
as far as regarded the picturesque, deficient in wood. 
The prickly pear was much more abundant than the 
mango, the tamarind, or those more stately forest 
trees which tower so majestically above the dwarfish 
growth of an Indian jungle. That hirsute and in- 
elegant plant, so disagreeably prevalent in most tro- 
* A very large species of rat, almost without hair, and the 
back covered with bristles, like a wild hog. 
E 
