Tehrî is a wretched town, without one respectable dwelling-house tenanted beyond the palace, or one merchant, or even shopkeeper of capital and credit. There are some tolerable houses unoccupied and in ruins; and there are a few neat temples built as tombs, or cenotaphs, in or around the city, if city it can be called. The stables and accommodations for all public establishments seem to be all in the same ruinous state as the dwelling-houses. The revenues of the state are spent in feeding Brahmans and religious mendicants of all kinds; and in such idle ceremonies as those at which the Râjâ and all his court have just been assisting--ceremonies which concentrate for a few days the most useless of the people of India, the devotee followers (Bairâgîs) of the god Vishnu, and tend to no purpose, either useful or ornamental, to the state or to the people. This marriage of a stone to a shrub, which takes place every year, is supposed to cost the Râjâ, at the most moderate estimate, three lakhs of rupees a year, or one-fourth of his annual revenue.[10] The highest officers of which his government is composed receive small beggarly salaries, hardly more than sufficient for their subsistence; and the money they make by indirect means they dare not spend like gentlemen, lest the Râjâ might be tempted to take their lives in order to get hold of it. All his feudal barons are of the same tribe as himself, that is, Râjpûts; but they are divided into three clans-- Bundêlas, Pawârs, and Chandêls. A Bundêla cannot marry a woman of his own clan, he must take a wife from the Pawârs or Chandêls; and so of the other two clans--no member of one can take a wife from his own clan, but must go to one of the other two for her. They are very much disposed to fight with each other, but not less are they disposed to unite against any third party, not of the same tribe. Braver men do not, I believe, exist than the Râjpûts of Bundêlkhand, who all carry their swords from their infancy.[11] It may be said of the Râjpûts of Mâlwa and Central India generally, that the Mogul Emperors of Delhi made the same use of them that the Emperors of Germany and the Popes made of the military chiefs and classes of Europe during the Middle Ages. Industry and the peaceful arts being reduced to agriculture alone under bad government or no government at all, the land remained the only thing worth appropriating; and it accordingly became appropriated by those alone who had the power to do so--by the Hindoo military classes collected around the heads of their clans, and powerful in their union. These held it under the paramount power on the feudal tenure of military service, as militia; or it was appropriated by the paramount power itself, who let it out on allodial tenure to peaceful peasantry. The one was the Zamîndârî, and the other the Mâlguzârî tenure of India.[12]