150 
THE ORIENTAL ANNUAL. 
affected, treacherously conspired to place it in the hand 
of the insurgent Neujif Khan. In 1787, however, it was 
re-captured by the Jhats, and by them occupied until 
it fell before the besieging army of Lord Lake, in 1805. 
The place is now little more than a town of ruin and 
desolation, for the inhabited part of it forms by far the 
smaller portion. Some of these remains are equal in 
beauty to any that are to be found in Delhi or Agra, 
and though, chiefly of the same era, are singularly va- 
ried in their style and design. 
It is quite laughable to behold with what uneasy 
jealousy the natives, especially the lower orders, uni- 
versally regard the movements of the exploring Euro- 
pean as he clambers from ruin to ruin, from tomb to 
banquet-hall ; and at first the inexperienced lover of 
antiquities is at a loss to account for the persevering 
assiduity with which his steps are dogged and his 
actions watched by these intruders upon his privacy. 
He cannot long remain in ignorance of the cause of 
this persecution ; for after having delighted his eyes 
with carved mouldings and prostrate columns, half 
legible inscriptions, and moss-grown sculptures ; after 
having examined and re-examined certain up-turned 
tablets and crumbling ornaments ; after having often 
used his walking cane for a crow-bar, and the toe of 
his boot as a substitute for a pick-axe, and having con - 
veyed to the capacious recesses of his shooting-jacket 
pocket certain valuable remnants of mosaic work or 
fragments of jasper and bloodstone ; some impertinent 
