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At his parties he generally selected the greatest strangers to sit next him at dinner, and was to all extremely affable and condescending. Thus passed the time till the August following, when his lordship's grand scheme for the annihilation of the Pindarees was published, and set us all on the stir. Every one was as busy as trunk-makers, preparing.
On the succeeding day we moved on, but learned that the hunted parties of the Pindarees had fallen into the hands of General Donkin's division, with another portion of their baggage. Thus they were handed from division to division.
We had gained unquestionable information that a large body of our old friends, the Pindarees, had found an asylum in this fort, to the number of five hundred men, to assist in its defence. The place was so closely invested by us, that a man could not possibly escape; and we, one and all, were determined to chastise the garrison for their base treachery, and the Pindarees for their impudence.
It is true they were the troops of an ally, but they were not to be trusted; and nothing but fear prevented them from seizing the treasure under Major Logie's care. At this place we received hourly information that the Pindarees were in the neighbourhood; but as they were in tens and twenties, it would have been folly for us to have gone in pursuit of them.
No longer are hosts of marauders like the Pindarees, who scarcely professed to be anything else than marauders, allowed to roam over fertile and populous regions in their robbing and murdering expeditions.
Thus we passed our time, living pleasantly enough. At length we found that the Pindarees had ascended another range of ghauts, and concentrated their forces at a place called Beechy Taull. Towards this place we bent our course, the extent of our daily marches being entirely regulated by the information brought in by our spies.
At one time, having lost sight of the Pindarees, we began to be seriously alarmed about our families at the different stations. Their doors were barricaded with stones, bricks, tables, chairs, drawers, beds, and so forth, and not one dared to venture abroad. All was fear and consternation.
The times were turbulent, for the Pindarees were then roving about in large bodies; but, notwithstanding all this, the rajah imagined he could safely leave his confidant in charge of his family and his people. Having made this arrangement, he started on his journey, reposing the most implicit trust in the firmness and integrity of the new minister for so he was denominated.
The whole combined powers of the three Presidencies of India were now in motion, to effect the dispersion or annihilation of the Pindarees, a set of despotic marauders and savage barbarians, who were prowling about the country in immense hordes.
The surrounding country being in a state of commotion, created by small parties of the Pindarees flying towards their long-forsaken homes, and purloining everything they came near on the road, our humane general permitted every tenth man to keep his matchlock and sword, for self-preservation.
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