Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/375

 The Expansion of England 337 I have not measured it mathematically; but to speak of it according to the ordinary journeys of the country, after the rate of three whole months' march, traversing from the fron- tiers of the kingdom of Golconda as far as beyond Kazni near Kandahar, which is the first town of Persia, I cannot but persuade myself otherwise but that it is at least five times as far as from Paris to Lyons, — that is, about five hundred common leagues. . . . In this same extent of country there are sundry nations which the Mogul is not full master of, most of them still retaining their particular sovereigns and lords that neither obey him nor pay him tribute but from constraint ; many that do little, some that do nothing at all, and some also that receive tribute from him. . . . Such are the Pathans, a Mohammedan people issued from the side of the river Ganges toward Bengal, who before the invasion of the Moguls in India had taken their time to make themselves potent in many places, and chiefly at Delhi, and to render many rajahs thereabout their tributaries. These Pathans are fierce and warlike, and even the mean- est of them, though they be but waiting men and porters, are still of a very high spirit, being often heard to say, by way of swearing, " Let me never be king of Delhi, if it be not so"; a people that despise the Indians, heathens, and Moguls, and mortally hate the last, still remembering what they were formerly, before they were by them driven away from their large principalities, and constrained to retire hither and thither. . . . Of the like sort are more than an hundred rajahs, or con- siderable heathen sovereigns, dispersed through the whole empire, some near to, others remote from, Agra and Delhi ; amongst whom there are about fifteen or sixteen that are very rich and puissant ; such are Rana (who formerly was, as it were, emperor of the rajahs, and who is said to be of the prog- eny of King Porus), Jesseigne, and Jessomseigne, who are so great and powerful that if they three alone should combine they would hold him [i.e. the Great Mogul] back ; each of them being able in a very short time to raise and bring into Extent of Hindustan Tributary peoples. The haughty Moham- medan Pathans. The rajahs