Page:MKGandhi patriot.djvu/33

 and necessitating a bridge in later times. Beyond this, and away from the sea, the plain spread out unchecked to the distant Barda Hills.

Over this plain and on those purple hills, some forty years ago, the horrors of civil war raged. Apparently. the great convulsions which have changed the fact of India-Moghul and Mahratta wars, the victories of Clive and Hastings, the India Mutiny—hardly raised the temperature of Kathiawar, but internal trouble, more than once, has done so. At one time. a large portion of the people of Porbandar, the warrior caste, disowned the Rana Sahib, and civil war followed. The Prince was victorious, but traditions are still told, over the hookah of the glorious stand made by two brothers who were outlaws—Maccabæan in their bravery—and of how they fought to the last, one defiantly using his gun with his feet when his hands were useless. The Gujaratis were evidently cast in another mould from that of the milder natives of Eastern India, and the experience of war has told.

The sea, too, has had its powerful influence over them. As with the Phœnicians, the Northmen, and the British, the sea has been their nursing mother. The chief occupation of Porbandar,