RUINS AT OLD DELHI. 
17 
their stock is exhausted, they suffer dreadfully ; but 
being endowed with the faculty of perceiving when 
water is within a certain distance, either by an ex- 
quisite keenness of scent, or some unknown power of 
perception peculiar to them, they hurry forward with 
extreme activity and fill their receptacles, without suf- 
fering much inconvenience from the temporary suspen- 
sion. 
The deserted buildings among the ruins of old Delhi, - 
are, as I have said, the occasional haunts of robbers, 
who take possession of them until they are obliged by 
the native law-authorities, sufficiently lax, however, in 
their functions generally, to abandon them for more 
remote retreats. At the beginning of the present 
century, the whole province of Delhi, and especially 
that part of it which forms the modern division of Mo- 
radabad, swarmed with robbers ,* these used to prowl 
the country in numerous and well organised bands, 
headed by some desperate chieftain who was the terror 
of the whole district. The daring leaders, who might 
rather be termed rebels than robbers, had so entire an 
ascendency over their followers, that the latter never 
betrayed them, but almost invariably stood by them to 
the last extremity. Those formidable bands of de- 
predators set the ordinary native police establishments 
at defiance, and such was their power, that the law- 
functionaries were afraid to interfere with them ; they 
consequently pursued their depredations with compa- 
rative impunity. They were regularly confederated, 
and the supreme authority descended from father to 
son, unless some great disqualification rendered the 
latter unfit to succeed, when the choice commonly fell 
c 3 
