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218 medicine could not cure him, even if the musk, ambergris, pounded pearls, sandal and almonds, which formed an important part of the native pharmacopœia, did not hasten the end. He summoned to his bedside Prince Kharak Singh, his only son, and proclaimed him his heir, with Dhyán Singh as minister, a triumph which that wily fox was not destined to enjoy for long. Then, after having given twenty-five lakhs of rupees in alms to the poor and to the priests of Nánkhána, where the first Guru was born, and to those of Dera Bábá Nának, where he died, the great Mahárájá was moved, according to Sikh and Hindu custom, from his bed to a carpet on the ground, where he breathed his last on the 27th June, 1839.

The six years which followed were a period of storm and anarchy, in which assassination was the rule and the weak were ruthlessly trampled under foot. The legitimate line, Kharak Singh, the imbecile, and his handsome, reckless, vicious son, Nao Nihál Singh, was soon extinguished in blood. Then came the turn of the impostors: Mahárájá Sher Singh, a drunken debauchee, murdered together with his son by the fierce Sindhanwalias; and Dhulíp Singh, the son of the dancing girl, whose end would have been as swift and bloody as the others had not a propitious fortune and the collapse of the Sikh army allowed him a secure refuge in the unrequited generosity of the British Government.

As Ranjít Singh had sown, so was the harvest. The fathers had eaten sour grapes and the children's