misfortune is singularly efficacious in thinning the ranks of a prince’s retinue. Dara was now accompanied by little more than two thousand men, and this number, moreover, was daily diminished by the peasantry of the country, a wild and savage race, who hung upon his rear, pillaging and murdering all those who lagged for a moment behind the body of the army. It was now the midst of summer; the heat was tremendous; and the fugitives, without baggage or tents, had to make their way over the naked sandy plains of Ajmere, by day exposed to the intolerable rays of the sun, and by night to the dews and chilling blasts which sometimes issue from the northern mountains. However, the prince and his followers pushed on rapidly, and now began to entertain some hopes of safety, having approached to within one day’s journey of Ahmedabad, the governor of which had been promoted to the post by Dara himself. But the emissaries and the gold of Aurungzebe had already done their work at Ahmedabad. The treacherous governor, on hearing of the near approach of the prince, wrote to prohibit his drawing nearer the city, informing him that if he persisted he would find the gates shut, and the people in arms against him. On the evening before this news was brought to him, Dara had taken refuge with his harem in a caravansary, into which, in spite of the natural aversion of all orientals to introduce strangers among the women of their anderûn, he kindly invited Bernier, apprehending lest the sanguinary peasantry should beat out his brains in the darkness. Here it was melancholy to see the shifts to which this unfortunate prince was driven to have recourse for the preserving, even in this last extremity, of the dignity of his harem; for, possessing neither tent nor any other effectual covering, he caused a few slight screens to be fixed up, in order to maintain some semblance of seclusion, and these were kept steady by being tied to the wheels of Bernier’s wagon.