YENGASHAH. 
209 
women, we may attribute something of their early bloated and 
faded aspects, to the excessive use of the bath, and habitual want 
of exercise; and we may find some reason for an even more pre¬ 
mature destruction of youth in the lower classes, from their 
similar misuse of hot water and vapour, with the addition of 
noisome clothing, close unwholesome lodgings, and all the 
wretched consequents on both. 
I have, just before, given a hint of the miserable interior of 
these dwellings ; but, when they collect into villages, and are 
seen from a distance, they possess an air of space and conse¬ 
quence, which promises the sort of comfort that has never yet 
been found within their walls. For, walls they have, and 
towers too, of hard-dried day, inclosing a large square area. 
But, when the traveller draws near, he usually discovers these 
imposing bulwarks to be in a ruinous condition,. Not like the 
picturesque old dykes, surrounding some ancient farm-house, 
in our own land; and which, long conviction of absolute se¬ 
curity has abandoned to the mouldering hand of time, the 
white-thorn, and the ivy. But here, stupid neglect might 
seem the sole cause of the dilapidation ; naked, tumbling-down 
walls, open to man or beast, just as the appetite for rapine might 
move the incursion of either. But the fact is, that a sense of 
present safety, under the formidable arm of the Sardar, which 
protects them from foreign enemies, and the rigorous measures 
against thieves, which clears the roads of banditti, are the real 
motives for leaving these village-walls in ruins. The peasantry 
of U country must have advanced far in the refinements of life, 
before they turn the accidental circumstances of their situation 
into objects of taste and ornament. The only trees which we 
saw on the plain, were within and around these areas ; but they 
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