4. In many parts of India, especially in Mathurâ (Mattra) on the Jumna, and the neighbouring districts, the peacock is held strictly sacred, and shooting one would be likely to cause a riot. Tavernier relates a story of a rich Persian merchant being beaten to death by the Hindoos of Gujarât for shooting a peacock. (Tavernier, _Travels_, transl. Ball, vol. i, p. 70.) the bird is regarded as the vehicle of the Hindoo god of war, variously called Kumâra, Skanda, or Kârtikeya. the editor, like the author, has observed that in Bundêlkhand no objection is raised to the shooting of peacocks by any one who cares for such poor sport. 5. In British India the manufacture of salt can be practised only by persons duly licensed. 6. The Revenue Settlement Regulations now in force in British India provide liberally for the encouragement of groves, and hundred of miles of road are annually planted with trees. 7. Sanitation did not trouble native states in those days. CHAPTER 36 Gwâlior and its Government. On the 22nd,[1] we came on fourteen miles to Gwâlior, over some ranges of sandstone hills, which are seemingly continuations of the Vindhyan range. Hills of indurated brown and red iron clay repose upon and intervene between these ranges, with strata generally horizontal, but occasionally bearing signs of having been shaken by internal convulsions. These convulsions are also indicated by some dykes of compact basalt which cross the road.[2] Nothing can be more unprepossessing than the approach to Gwâlior; the hills being naked, black, and ugly, with rounded tops devoid of grass or shrubs, and the soil of the valleys a poor red dust without any appearance of verdure or vegetation, since the few autumn crops that lately stood upon them have been removed.[3] From Antrî to Gwâlior there is no sign of any human habitation, save that of a miserable police guard of four or five, who occupy a wretched hut on the side of the road midway, and seem by their presence to render the scene around more dreary.[4] the road is a mere footpath unimproved and unadorned by any single work of art; and, except in this footpath, and the small police guard, there is absolutely no single sign in all this long march to indicate the dominion, or even the presence, of man; and yet it is between two contiguous [_sic_] capitals, one occupied by one of the most ancient, and the other by one of the greatest native sovereigns of Hindustan.[5] One cannot but feel that he approaches the capital of a dynasty of barbarian princes, who, like Attila, would choose their places of residence, as devils choose their pandemonia, for their ugliness, and rather reside in the dreary wastes of Tartary than on the shores of the Bosphorus. There are within the dominions of Sindhia seats for a capital that would not yield to any in India in convenience, beauty, and salubrity; but, in all these dominions, there is not, perhaps, another place so hideously ugly as Gwâlior, or so hot and unhealthy.