Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/25

Rh you to pore over Mr. J.M. Campbell's famous Gazeteers. In these prodigious results of editorial labour you will find a forest of facts and figures which you can traverse leisurely, till you become another Dr. Hunter, a prince of particulars, a very king of quotations. But if you care to have a fresh account of, perhaps, the least known but most interesting parts of Her Majesty's Indian Empire, of the inner life of an important people, their habits, customs, manners, the moral and social forces at work among them; then you are welcome to these pages, such as they are. You will have to be content with rough, hasty sketches, but generally taken on the spot—sketches from real life. I would not promise you much of system and order—because, you see, this is not an Official Beport. Many of these sketches appeared, at the time, in the Bombay Review, and are all the better for having received a few touches here and there from the very able and accomplished editor. Not a few of them were, indeed, undertaken at the suggestion of that veteran Anglo-Indian journalist. These sketches, and a few more contributed to other papers, are here