Among these people the following story was told as giving the origin of the sacrifices of human beings: “A certain Raja, having built a spacious and beautiful tank, found every effort to fill it with water impracticable. “This greatly distressed the Raja, and having in vain exerted every expedient of devotion and labour the Raja at last vowed to his particular deity the sacrifice of his own child, provided this precious offering was accepted by the grant of his prayer. “Accordingly the Raja directed one of his children to be placed in the centre of the tank, on which the deity instantly gave an undeniable testimony of his assent and gratification; the tank immediately filled with fine water, and the child was sacrificed in being drowned.”[189] The records of the correspondence and the engagements for the next eighty years make interesting reading, especially the communications from the various princes protesting that inasmuch as they had killed their daughters for 4900 years it was an unfriendly act for the British Government to interfere with the practice or insist on discussing it. Showing their humanity and their _right_ to be protected from interference in the matter of female infanticide, the Futteh Mahommed Jemadar, writing to Colonel Walker, protests that already “in this country, neither birds nor animals are killed, goats excepted, and but few even eat them; and charitable places for fakirs going and coming from Mecca, and Hindus performing pilgrimages, are so strongly planted that they suffer no annoyance.”[190] In an interesting batch of correspondence, 1835, between the British political agent, J. P. Willoughby, at Kattywar and various Jhallas, Rawuls, Gohuls, and Surwyejas of this section of India, these sub-chiefs reply to the half-cajoling, half-commanding communications of the political agent that they will do their best to see that infanticide is stopped, plaintively informing the representatives of the British Government that in addition they will promise to bring up their own daughters. “Five months since,” says the Jhareja Dosajee, Chief of Paal, appealingly, “my brother, Jhareja Hurreebhyee, got a daughter, which he preserved. This I wrote for your information.” In the brief time since 1835 there is evident the great change that has come over the spirit of the once proud sons of the East. The iron of the West has left its mark.