This hang-dog expression of countenance was so conspicuous that I many a time have heard the country people remark, "These are the slaves of the party." They have neither spirit nor pluck as compared with the Africans, and if one saw a village he turned out of the way to beg in the most abject manner, or lay down and slept, the only excuse afterwards being, "My legs were sore." Having allowed some of them to sleep at the fire in my house, they began a wholesale plunder of everything they could sell, as cartridges, cloths, and meat, so I had to eject them.

One of them then threatened to shoot my interpreter Simon if he got him in a quiet place away from the English power.

As this threat had been uttered three times, and I suspect that something of the kind had prevented the havildar exerting his authority, I resolved to get rid of them by sending them back to the coast by the first trader.

It is likely that some sympathizers will take their part, but I strove to make them useful.

They had but poor and scanty fare in a part of the way, but all of us suffered alike.