Gaurî-_s_a_m_kara found nothing to begin with—or rather, less than nothing, for he found not only an unorganised but a disorganised state. General Keatinge, who was Political Agent of Kathiawar during the years 1863 to 1867, found the transformation that had been wrought by Gaurî-_s_a_m_kara so complete that he could hardly believe that Bhavnagar was the same town which he had known in former days. Splendid buildings had arisen, devoted either to education or to the relief of the sick, the poor, and the needy. The harbour had been improved, and roads for trade and communications of every kind had been newly laid out or made serviceable. There was a large reservoir to supply the town with water; there were paddocks, a new jail, two medical dispensaries, and an immense hospital; there were telegraph and post offices, a High School, and a High Court of Justice. A railway had been built from Bhavnagar to Gondal, and so well was it administered, without syndicates or any other kind of jobbery, that it yielded annually a fair revenue to the state. The responsibility for all these undertakings rested on the shoulders of one man, and the credit for them should rest there also. All this, however, is not what interested me in the old man, nor will it, I fear, interest many of my readers. He is after all but one of the many unknown ants that build up hills which, for all we know, one stroke of a stick may destroy again. Nor was it his moral character, noble and pure as it doubtless must have been, that riveted my attention chiefly. A man could hardly have achieved what he did, unless he stood high above the reach of the vulgar vices and failings of mankind. In that direction, I may quote a few more judgments from the mouths of those who had known him during his long active life. “His chief strength,” as one of his friends writes, “was to be found in his exemplary private character— “His words were bonds, his oaths were oracles, His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; His tears pure messengers sent from his heart; His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.” This is beautifully expressed; but does it give us an image of the man himself? Even the strongest words seem so colourless when they are meant to give us the picture of a living man. It may be quite true that he enjoyed in private and domestic life a veneration that was due to his noble and patriarchal character, and that his influence was, as we are told, invariably and unerringly exerted in putting an extinguisher on private feuds and disagreements among a wide and ever-widening circle of relations, friends, and members of his caste. We read that “in order to promote harmony among them he often made personal sacrifices, and that he proved himself a friend of the needy and the helpless, of genius and talent struggling to rise. If it was not to be a blessing to others, life seemed to him not worth living.”