40 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
singularly muscular and elastic, betokening at once 
great strength and activity. Their countenances are 
not prepossessing ; and whilst their whole aspect ex- 
cites rather a feeling of compassion for their civil 
and social degradation, they confirm this unpleasant 
impression by the mean servility of their address. 
Even the higher classes of the peasantry, here called 
zemeendars, who have extensive farms and contrive 
to live in a state of great comparative comfort, are 
scarcely better conditioned in a moral point of view 
than the lowest of their dependants. They have the 
same vices of meanness, servility, and falsehood ; 
they lie, cheat, and rob, where they have the oppor- 
tunity, as if to lie, cheat, and rob were the three car- 
dinal virtues. Their ignorance often shames humanity, 
and yet they possess in an eminent degree that well- 
disguised cunning so common to the most degraded 
intellects. They seek not to obtain knowledge, for 
they have no sympathy with it; to them it would 
be an unprofitable acquisition, a burden, from which 
release is therefore a joy. Even the highest orders, 
their princes, possess the elements of all these in- 
firmities so conspicuous in the lower, and in propor- 
tion to their power are these vile propensities the cause 
of more or less mischief. They have no dignity of 
character, being utterly without honour or principle. 
I have mentioned the extreme muscularity of limb 
possessed by these diminutive mountaineers, especially 
the poorer among them ; indeed, their legs are gene- 
rally disproportioned to their bodies, developing from 
the ankle to the hip a compages of muscles that would 
well become the members of a man six feet high. 
