people (among whom it has been my lot to be thrown for years, and with whom I have often had to pass months consecutively, without seeing a white face, or speaking a word of my native tongue), as well as to show the attitude they assumed in the dreadful times of the Mutiny.
It is impossible for those who have not actually lived among the peasantry of Upper India, and who have not themselves had experience of their innate character and of their inner life, to be able fully to realise their amiability of disposition and inborn goodness of heart. They are a people so mild, so docile, so humane, so submissive in deportment, and withal so faithful, that their nature would recoil with horror at any act of cruelty or treachery. They are known to venerate even the very insects of the earth, and regard all animals as having been formed like themselves by the decree of God, whose life they have no more right to take away or to put it to corporal pain wantonly than that of a human being. Moreover, taking them all together, they possess a wonderful similarity of disposition in showing much sympathy and kindness, not alone towards each other when in trouble or distress, but even to perfect strangers. “Live and let live” is their undying maxim, and so rigidly do they adhere to the principle of this sympathetic fellow-feeling, that the most productive lands adjoining their villages are often gratuitously set apart as Bhiya-Chara, which, being interpreted, means provision for the poor Brotherhood. Where in the wide civilised
