Our march this morning was but short, and the last two miles were in the plains of Marwar, with merely an occasional rock. Carey joined us, congratulating himself on the ducking which had secured him better fare than we had enjoyed in the pass of Kumbhalmer, and which fastened both on Waugh and myself violent colds. The atmospheric change was most trying: emerging from the cold breezes of the mountains to 96° of Fahrenheit, the effect was most injurious: it was 58° in the morning of our descent into the glen. Alas! for my surviving barometer! Mahesh, my amanuensis, who had been entrusted with it, joined us next day, and told me the quicksilver had contrived to escape; so I lost the opportunity of comparing the level of the desert with the plains of Marwar. =The Chief of Rūpnagar.=—_October 27._—Halted to collect the scattered baggage, and to give the men rest; the day was nearly over before the whole came up, each party bringing lamentable reports of the disastrous descent. I received a visit from the chief of Rupnagar, who, like the Thakur of Ghanerao, owes a divided allegiance to the courts on each side the mountains. His castle, which gives him rank as one of the most conspicuous of the second grade of the Rana’s nobles, was visible from the camp, being placed on the western face of the mountains, and commanding a difficult passage across them. From thence he looks down upon Desuri and his ancient patrimony, now transferred with Godwar to the Rathor prince; and often has he measured his lance with the present occupants to retain his ancient _bhum_, the right derived from the cultivating proprietor of the soil. The chief of Rupnagar is of the Solanki race, a lineal descendant of the sovereigns of Nahrwala, and the inheritor [690] of the war-shell of the celebrated monarch Siddhraj,[4.26.20] one of the most powerful who ever sat on an eastern throne, and who occupied that of Anhilwara from A.D. 1094, during half a century, celebrated as a patron of literature and the arts. When in the thirteenth century this State was destroyed, the branches found refuge, as already described, in Mewar; for the ancestor of Rupnagar was brother to the father of “the star of Badnor,” and was invested with the estate and lands of Desuri by the same gallant prince who obtained her hand by the recovery of her father’s estates. The anecdote is worthy of relation, as showing that the Rajput will stop at nothing “to obtain land.” The intestine feuds amongst Rana Raemall’s sons, and his constant warfare with the kings of Delhi and Malwa, made his authority very uncertain in Godwar. The Mina and Mer possessed themselves of lands in the plains, and were supported by the Madrecha descendant of the once independent Chauhan sovereigns of Nadol, the ancient capital of this region. Sand, the Madrecha, had obtained possession of Desuri, the garrison town. To expel him, the prince had recourse to Sada, the Solanki, whose son was married to the daughter of the Madrecha. The