creatures. Several stories were told me of his
childish doings. Among others, the following:

ln default of an heir to his "throne," it
would devolve in name as well as in fact to the
"Company." Hitherto he had been childless,
and the prospect of remaining so was
exceedingly galling to him. He determined
to contract a fresh marriage, and although in
the opinion of the Laird o' Cockpen, "wooing
wi' favour was fashious to seek," the rajah
resolved that he would consult his own taste and
fancy in the selection of his next spouse.
Eighteen suitable Mahratta damsels of his own
caste were accordingly collected, and, on a given
day, were presented for selection. After due
consideration, the rajah fixed upon one, and
said she should be his queen. But the seventeen
rejected young ladies had been too well
schooled in the part they were to play, to let the
matter rest there. With one consent they lifted
up their voices, and declared they had been
disgraced, in a manner contrary to all the usages
and customs of Oriental ladies, by having been
submitted to the gaze of one of the opposite
sex; that now no one would marry them, and
therefore the rajah must take them one and all,
and, if he did not, the whole seventeen would
drown themselves, and their deaths would lie at
his door. In vain did the perplexed rajah try
to temporise; they only became the more
clamorous. Never was there such a hullabaloo.
Indian ladies do not faint, but they have a hundred
ways quite as effectual of carrying their
point. At last the poor king, finding that
there was no other way of escaping the dilemma,
was obliged to give in and promise to marry
the whole batch. Having once conceded, he
resolved, or his creatures resolved, that there
should be no pre-eminence given to any one
wife over the rest in the marriage ceremonies—
a very simple matter in theory, but one
not so easy to carry into practice. One of the
first questions was, how they were to avoid a
show of favouritism in going to the temple, and
the solution was this: A carriage must be
built broad enough to hold all the eighteen
young ladies in a row.

The carriage was accordingly built within the
precincts of the royal palace, and it was
completed to the rajah's satisfaction. The auspicious
day and the lucky hour arrived, the musicians
arranged themselves in their places, the ladies
took their seats, and all was in readiness to
proceed. Then, for the first time, it occurred
to some astute individual that the carriage
must pass through the palace gates, and any
one could see, with half an eye, that the
rajah's ancestors had never contemplated the
possibility of one of their number taking eighteen
brides to "church" in one carriage, and had,
therefore, built gates far too narrow for the
purpose. What was to be done? However,
the difficulty solved itself, for the carriage
broke down before it got to the gate, and
there was an end of the brilliant contrivance.
I have sometimes, in conversation, when talking
of the rapid rise of the once United States,
and the possibility of their extending in
numbers and influence to a dangerous degree,
related this anecdote of the Tanjore rajah's
wives, and ventured to predict that the
occidental state carriage would either find the gateway
too narrow, or break through in the back
like its Oriental prototype.

During my stay at Tanjore I visited the
monument of Swartz, the missionary and
honoured friend of a former rajah. The marble
depicts the king steeped in sorrow, standing by
the bedside of the dying teacher; and the monument
was erected at the cost of the monarch.
I also inspected the principal temple in the fort,
where a magnificent figure of a bull, hewn out
of a solid mass of black granite—a stone not to
be found within a circuit of many miles—
suggests the question by what means, now
unknown to us, the men of old transported masses
which we of modern times could scarcely
attempt to carry away with all our means and
appliances. Another large mass of granite
surmounts a lofty tower one hundred and seventy
feet high, of the kind characteristic of all Hindu
temples, and an inscription states that in order to
place it where it now rests, an inclined plane
was constructed five miles in length.

The most entertaining incident connected
with my stay at Tanjore was, however, an
evening visit which I paid, in company with Mr.
Post and a young lady of his family, to the
confidential friend and adviser of the rajah. To
the latter I could not obtain access, owing to
the absence of the resident; for, without his
permission, no European can have that privilege;
and though doubtless he—whom I had
come to Tanjore to visit—would have sent
the necessary permission, I had no time to wait
for it.

Notice had been duly given of our intended
visit to the minister, and due preparations had
been made for our reception. At sunset we drove
to the fort, in a carriage drawn by two swift-trotting
bullocks: a very common mode of locomotion
where roads are often heavy and unmetalled.
Camels were standing or lying picketed without
the gates, and the rampart walls were
thronged with the rajah's liege subjects, who
were sitting there, squatted after the manner of
Orientals, talking over the gossip of the city.
Many of them had small cages which contained
larks, and it appeared that it was the "fancy"
to possess a bird of this kind, and to listen to
its singing. Dirty sentries of the rajah's brave
army, dressed in the British uniform, stood at
the entrance-gates, and from sewer and ditch
odours strong and vile ascended on all sides.
Pressing our handkerchiefs to our noses we
proceeded to the dwelling of our host, and
alighted at the entrance-hall: a low dark and
dirty little room. The house appeared to be
undergoing repair, for in this room were a heap
of lime on one side, and a heap of sand on the
other: on the summit of which was seated, on
their haunches, a native band discoursing
execrable music. One fellow who performed on a
most sonorous brass instrument, by way of