that "though drunkenness is a common and glorious vice and an exercise of the King's, yet it is so strictly forbidden that no man can enter into the place where the King sits but the porters smell his breath and if he have but tasted wine is not suffered to come in, and if the reason be known of his absence he shall with difficulty escape the whip."
The story is related of an unfortunate noble who in an unguarded moment in open durbar made an oblique reference to the previous night's wassail and, for his indiscretion, was almost beaten to death with the terrible whips described by Hawkins.
Cruelty, now as in Hawkins' time, was a conspicuous feature of the Emperor's character. One day Roe and his associates were horrified at the awful cries of a woman of the harem who, for some indiscretion, had been condemned to be buried up to the neck and left to die by exposure to the fierce rays of the sun. For one whole day and a part of another the wretched creature's heart-piercing appeals for mercy were heard by the Englishmen in their lodgings, which were in the vicinity of the scene of the terrible tragedy. They, of course, dare not interfere in the least degree, as to have done so would probably have been to seal their own doom as well as that of the victim of Jehangir's wrath.
In some respects, as Hawkins had noted, the Mogul government showed considerable enlightenment. One feature of the system which to-day would be regarded as counting to some extent for administrative righteousness is, curiously enough, cited by Roe as an example of imperial waywardness. It was the practice invariably followed at that period of publishing accounts of the discussions in durbar upon public questions with the decisions
