obvious; but the most moderate expectations looked to an enlargement of the limits of observation, the relief of the regular cavalry from the duties of the light troop, and an extended command over the resources of the country to be traversed. Two thousand of the most select were attached to the reserve, and placed under the immediate management of Brigade Major Dallas; in the hope that his skill, and conciliation, and example might render them efficient. Fifteen days were sufficient to show the total disappointment of the most meagre hopes. The enemy practised upon them on every successive day some enterprise or stratagem, always successful. They soon showed themselves unequal to the protection of their own foragers on ordinary occasions; and after the lapse of a few days they never stirred beyond the English pickets, consuming forage and grain, and augmenting distress of every kind, without the slightest return of even apparent utility.
"The prowess of these troops was indeed exhibited at an early period in plundering the villages to which Lord Cornwallis had granted protection; but when it was understood that his lordship disclaimed such proceedings, but could not control them, the villagers undertook their own cause, and the march occasionally produced exhibitions of attack and defence, in which the wishes of the army were uniformly adverse to their allies, and an English safeguard frequently appeared protecting their enemies against their friends. The contemptible state of this cavalry may in some degree have arisen from the effeminacy and decline which marked the general character of the Government to which they belonged; but its more immediate causes were referred to a commander (Tedjewunt Singh, a Hindoo) of no respectability or military pretension, who was said to have risen to command by court intrigue, and was deemed better qualified to render his master a good commercial account of the profits of the subsidy than a splendid report of military glory. His second in command, Assud Ali, and the ostensible military leader, had some reputation for that precarious valour which
