THE STATION. 55
which here ilourished with extraordinary vigour. A malicious Hindoo will deliberately mangle the body of a person who has died from a natural cause, and fling it on the ground of some neighbour to whom the scamp may happen to bear a grudge. The unfortunate recipient finds himself involved in the consequences dreaded by the poor people in the Arabian Nights, when the hunchback was choked by a fish-bone beneath their hospitable roof.
Bajee Rao, the Peishwa of Poonah, was the last monarch of one of those great Mahratta dynasties which long shared the sovereignty of the Central Highlands and the plunder of all Hindostan. So near a neighbour could not fail to be guilty of the “amount of “treachery,” “ faithlessness,” and “ bad “internal government,” necessary to justify the annexation of his dominions. Urged by that painful necessity of taking what belongs to others, which is the inevitable result of all our dealings with Oriental powers, we dethroned Bajee Rao, confiscated his territories, and assigned him a residence at Bithoor, a small town twelve miles up the river from Cawnpore. Here he lived until his death in princely state, inasmuch as the Company always behaved with great generosity towards the princes whom it had plundered, after the manner of those open-handed thieves of fiction who fling back a couple of broad pieces to
