178 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
his wife, even though none of her children should be 
his. Such a system of social degradation,, as may be 
supposed, does not tend to elevate the characters of 
this caste, and they have generally all the vices which 
a course of systematic immorality must inevitably en- 
gender. They are a debased tribe, though they rank 
higher than the Tiers, who are far their superiors in 
moral dignity and social respectability. 
I may mention here a singular circumstance which 
occurred among some Nair children while a military 
friend of mine was stationed at Cannanore, a town 
upon the sea-coast of this province. A number of 
boys, none of whom exceeded the age of twelve years, 
and some of them were considerably younger, whilst in 
the charge of their flocks — for they were goat-herds — 
which grazed near the parade-ground of the British re- 
giment stationed at Cannanore, had there an oppor- 
tunity of witnessing the mode of punishment adopt- 
ed in the British cantonment. Struck, as it appears, 
with its justice, they established among themselves 
a punitive discipline precisely similar. It was deter- 
mined that any instance of theft detected among them 
should be punished with death. Having witnessed 
the military execution of a soldier and flogging, they 
came to the resolution that graver and minor offences 
among them should be visited with chastisements of 
equal severity. A short time after they had esta- 
blished their system of legislation, a boy was detected 
in having appropriated to his own use — a direct viola- 
tion of their laws — some seeds of the jack fruit with 
which he had been intrusted. He was immediately 
subjected to a kind of court-martial, found guilty, and 
