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amends for the wrong inflicted, but the treasury suffered, the prestige of provincial authority over the chiefs was lowered, and smuggling left rampant as ever. As I did not return to the Kattywar Agency, I am unaware whether any or what measures were taken to check this, or to keep the chiefs to their agreement.

The connection between the foregoing and the black lion does not at first sight appear, but was in this wise. I have mentioned the havock done in my office by the savage onslaught that saved the lion from mine. The head accountant, though very badly wounded, continued struggling to perform his duties so manfully, and with such hope of recovery, that I made no effort to supply his place. But he died not long after I had left, and when his accounts were made up it appeared that the payments to the Jusdhun chief and to the captors had been entered minus the one thousand rupees transferred to the famine fund, the accounts of which were also kept by the Agency, though not entered in the Government books. Of course the whole sum should have been debited to the parties enti

tled to receive it, the transfer of the thousand rupees to the charity being a private arrangement. As it was, the audit authorities checked the transaction, and this led to the dénoûment I have detailed.

CHAPTER VIII.

FURTHER OBSERVATIONS ON

KATTYWAR-PE

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MEANS

CULIAR USAGE OF BAHAR-WUTTIA
ADOPTED BY GOVERNMENT TO DEAL WITH IT,
AND WITH CRIME GENERALLY-CAPTURE OF
CAPTAIN GRANT BY A BAND OF THESE OUT-
LAWS HIS NARRATIVE OF CAPTIVITY-HINDOO
SUPERSTITIONS.

THE

HE great settlement by Colonel Walker in 1805 left the Peninsula under nearly three hundred separate jurisdictions, or states, now reduced to less than two hundred.

The duty of the

British Agent was to levy their stipulated amount of tribute in the shares assigned to the Peshwa and Gaekwar, and to preserve the peace. When the first failed, the state was placed in charge of persons who undertook to manage it, and clear off the debt. Thus, bit by bit, a considerable portion

of the country fell under the more immediate control of the Agency, and for such, as well as for weak states, unable to deal with their own criminals, some system of magisterial and judicial procedure became necessary. A High Criminal Court of Justice was therefore established, with the Political Agent as Chief Judge; quasi puisne judges called Assessors, being selected for each trial from among the leading men of the country.

This was an excellent measure, for it tended to prevent crime, not only by punishing the offenders, but also by exposing abuses of power that too often gave rise to the offence. In the absence of lawful means of redress, it had long been the custom for aggrieved parties to take the law into their own hands, especially in the case of encroachments on land, when the injured owner deemed himself justified in taking to the jungles and hills, enlisting mercenaries, and making war on the state that had wronged him. Scores, nay, hundreds, of cut-throats were always available for a sufficient consideration, and plenty of rival states at hand, where the band were sure of secret support, while

fear or favour would generally secure this in his own district. Thus bahar-wuttia had become the established usage. The term literally means out of country, a self-imposed outlawry, to be terminated by compromise, capture, or death. These outlaws, as a general rule, only ravaged their own state, but they seldom scrupled to rob, maim, or murder any refusing countenance, or to capture those whose ransom might further their cause.

In 1820 a bahar-wuttia band waylaid and kept captive for nearly three months a British Officer, treating him with a barbarity equalling that shown by King Theodore to the captives it cost us so many millions to release. Notwithstanding the sufferings and hardships endured half a century ago in the most pestilential jungles of the Peninsula during the sickly season of the year, this gentleman, Captain George Grant, still survives as the senior officer of the late Indian Navy, and has, at my request, favoured me with an account of his captivity, of which his modesty has hitherto prevented any published description. Though then only of some ten years' standing, he had brought

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