12. It would be difficult to point out an example of a Muhammadan standing camp which was first converted into an open, and then into a fortified town.
13. This abstract of the history of the Deccan, or Southern India, is not quite accurate. The Emperor, or Sultan, Muhammad bin Tughlak, after A.D. 1325, reduced the Deccan to a certain extent to submission, but the country revolted in A.D. 1347, when Hasan Gango founded the Bahmani dynasty of Gulbarga, afterwards known as that of Bidar. At the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, the kingdom so founded broke up into five, not four, separate states, namely, Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, Berar, and Bidar. The Berar state had a separate existence for about eighty-five years, and then became merged in the kingdom of Ahmadnagar.
Murder of Mr. Fraser, and Execution of the Nawab Shams-ud-din.
At Palwal Mr. Wilmot and Mr. Wright, who had come on business, and Mr. Gubbins, breakfasted and dined with us. They complained sadly of the solitude to which they were condemned, but admitted that they should not be able to get through half so much business were they placed at a large station, and exposed to all the temptations and distractions of a gay and extensive circle, nor feel the same interest in their duties, or sympathy with the people, as they do when thrown among them in this manner. To give young men good feelings towards the natives, the only good way is to throw them among them at those out-stations in the early part of their career, when all their feelings are fresh about them. This holds good as well with the military as the civil officer, but more especially with the latter. A young officer at an outpost with his corps, or part of it, for the first season or two, commonly lays in a store of good feeling towards his men that lasts him for life; and a young gentleman of the Civil Service lays in, in the same manner, a good store of sympathy and fellow feeling with the natives in general.
Mr. Gubbins is the Magistrate and Collector of one of the three districts into which the Delhi territories are divided, and he has charge of Firozpur, the resumed estate of the late Nawab Shams-ud-din, which yields a net revenue of about two hundred thousand rupees a year. I have already stated that this Nawab took good care that his Mewati plunderers should not rob within his own estate; but he not only gave them free permission to rob over the surrounding districts of our territory, but encouraged them to do so, that he might share in their booty. He was a handsome young man, and an extremely agreeable companion; but a most unprincipled and licentious character. No man who was reputed to have a handsome wife or daughter was for a moment safe within his territories. The following account of Mr. William Fraser’s assassination by this Nawab may, I think, be relied upon.