precedence
and her lord's affections, upon the legitimate queens. The affair
happened, by the way, after the Mutiny, and was accomplished with great
pomp in the light of day. Subsequently those who might have stopped it
but did not, were severely punished. The girl said that she had no one
to look to but the dead man, and followed him, to use Tod's formula,
"through the flames." It would be curious to know whether _sati_ is
altogether abolished among these lonely hills in the walled holds of the
Thakurs.

But to return from the burning-ground to modern Udaipur, as at present
worked under the Maharana and his Prime Minister Rae Punna Lal, _C. I.
E._ To begin with, His Highness is a racial anomaly in that, judged by
the strictest European standard, he is a man of temperate life, the
husband of one wife whom he married before he was chosen to the throne
after the death of the Maharana Sujjun Singh in 1884. Sujjun Singh died
childless and gave no hint of his desires as to succession and--omitting
all the genealogical and political reasons which would drive a man
mad--Futteh Singh was chosen, by the Thakurs, from the Seorati Branch of
the family which Sangram Singh II. founded. He is thus a younger son of
a younger branch of a younger family, which lucid statement should
suffice to explain everything. The man who could deliberately unravel
the succession of any one of the Rajput States would be perfectly
capable of explaining the politics of all the Frontier tribes from
Jumrood to Quetta.

Roughly speaking, the Maharana and the Prime Minister--in whose family
the office has been hereditary for many generations--divide the power of
the State. They control, more or less, the Mahand Raj Sabha or Council
of Direction and Revision. This is composed of many of the Rawats and
Thakurs of the State, _and_ the Poet Laureate who, under a less genial
administration, would be presumably the Registrar. There are also
District Officers, Officers of Customs, Superintendents of the Mint,
Masters of the Horses, and Supervisor of Doles, which last is pretty and
touching. The State officers itself, and the Englishman's investigations
failed to unearth any Bengalis. The Commandant of the State Army, about
five thousand men of all arms, is a retired non-commissioned officer, a
Mr. Lonergan; who, as the medals on his breast attest, has done the
State some service, and now in his old age rejoices in the local rank of
Major-General, and teaches t