THE RAJAH OF PATNA. 
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good English ham, which he, by way of soothing his 
conscience, devoutly called Westphalia venison, he 
nevertheless resisted all attempts at conversion, and 
candidly told his reverend friend, that, although he 
considered it no sin to eat pork and drink wine, still 
nothing could induce him to become a neophyte. 
The Nabob kindly introduced us to the Rajah of 
Patna, a fine portly Hindoo, in the prime of life, and 
in the full vigour of his strength, active, robust, and 
hardy, entirely devoted to elephant and tiger hunting, 
and other sports of the field. He almost passed his 
life in the jungles, and the walls of his palace were 
covered with skins of wild beasts and serpents, the 
grim tokens at once of his ardour and of his prowess. 
It was a matter of no common occurrence to see a 
Mahomedan and a Hindoo upon such amicable terms 
as the Rajah and Nabob ; but the former, a most 
unusual thing by the way, was as liberal a Hindoo 
as the latter was a liberal Mussulman. They reci- 
procally eschewed the prejudices of their respective 
creeds, and lived in extreme harmony together. 
Among the curiosities which the Nabob submitted 
to our inspection, for he had many, was a morah, or 
footstool, formed of a vertebre of some huge creature, 
which the Rajah had presented to him several years 
before as a great curiosity, and so in truth it was. 
This colossal fragment of a once living frame was 
upwards of forty inches in circumference, and was a 
single joint of the backbone of an enormous serpent, 
which the Rajah, who was styled by the English re- 
sidents in that part of India, the Nimrod of the East, 
had found in one of his hunting excursions through the 
