Page:Enterprise and Adventure.djvu/153

Rh of the character of the petty princes of northern India to trust to this advice. "These princes," he says, "rob the merchants, but they rob with considerable discretion. They look upon them as the geese that lay golden eggs; yet they do not kill them, but only insist on their dropping some of their precious burden. But the mere traveller who passes never to return is stripped of his last rag." It was necessary to travel with something like a retinue, a necessity all the greater from the gradually accumulating burden of the specimens which he collected. Runjeet Sing, then ruler of the Sikhs, received Jacquemont with great cordiality. He treated him with the greatest distinction; made him several rich presents, and furnished him with all the means necessary to travel through his dominions, with as much safety as was possible in a country swarming with robbers, and petty chiefs who disputed and constantly set at defiance the authority of the nominal sovereign. On one occasion an officer from one of those chiefs, attended by two hundred armed mountaineers, suddenly appeared at a slight distance as Jacquemont was quietly chipping specimens of rocks in a mountain pass. Knowing that orientals are chiefly impressed by display, Jacquemont put on a good countenance, and having resumed his European clothes, seated himself majestically upon his chair, under a kind of canopy, got up hastily for the occasion. Blankets were then spread out upon the floor, and near him was put down a privileged carpet. All Jacquemont's company then stood up in two lines, many of them, he says, "more ragged than any of the poorest people you see in the streets of Paris," and when he was