Interview with the Râjâ who marries the Stone to the Shrub--Order of the Moon and the Fish. On the 8th,[1] after a march of twelve miles, we readied Tehrî, the present capital of the Râjâ of Orchhâ.[2] Our road lay over an undulating surface of soil composed of the detritus of the syenitic rock, and poor, both from its quality and want of depth. About three miles from our last territory we entered the boundary of the Orchhâ Râjâ's territory, at the village of Aslôn, which has a very pretty little fortified castle, built upon ground slightly elevated in the midst of an open grass plain. This, and all the villages we have lately passed, are built upon the bare back of the syenitic rock, which seems to rise to the surface in large but gentle swells, like the broad waves of the ocean in a calm after a storm. A great difference appeared to me to be observable between the minds and manners of the people among whom we were now travelling, and those of the people of the Sâgar and Nerbudda territories. They seemed here to want the urbanity and intelligence we find among our subjects in the latter quarters. The apparent stupidity of the people when questioned upon points the most interesting to them, regarding their history, their agriculture, their tanks, and temples, was most provoking; and their manners seemed to me more rude and clownish than those of people in any other part of India I had travelled over. I asked my little friend the Sarîmant, who rode with me, what he thought of this. 'I think', said he, 'that it arises from the harsh character of the government under which they live; it makes every man wish to appear a fool, in order that he may be thought a beggar and not worth the plundering.' 'It strikes me, my friend Sarîmant, that their government has made them in reality the beggars and the fools that they appear to be.' 'God only knows', said Sarîmant; 'certain it is that they are neither in mind nor in manners what the people of our districts are.'