The Rajput women of Káthiawád and Cutch deserve some special mention, both for their beauty and their exceptional cleverness. Beautiful they are above all other women of India except only in Kashmir, fair with a rich fresh golden tint of skin, with full soft eyes, and with long black hair. In their apparel they are particularly tasteful, and the green hues that they specially affect set off their complexion at its best under the Indian sky. Of their intelligence there is no doubt, and throughout the Rajput country they are respected for their talents and perhaps, shall we add, feared for their intrigue. Jealous and ambitious to a fault, they are not ignorant even of the use of poison; and at least it is a proverb that “She marries the land, not the man.” Gallant and courageous they are, even in evil, and it is not so long ago that the tale was told of a not-virtuous princess that night after night in the dark hours saddled a riding camel with her own hands in the stable and rode six miles out to join a lover, and before dawn, another six miles back, unseen, unknown, with the threat of a dagger-thrust, if discovered, always in her mind. But when well-beloved and cherished, these Rajput women are charming companions and faithful, assiduous helpmates. Besides the tribes who can claim to be Rajputs of authentic origin, descended as was said from the Central Asian invaders who transformed ancient India to its present type, it follows reasonably enough from the constitution of the tribal entities and from the eternal facts of power and sovereignty, that there are many others who put forward a claim more or less substantiated to a similar recognition. Such are the slightly later invaders of similar strains who came to India from Scythia by a different road, the Jhadejas of Cutch and Káthiawád, for instance, with their frequent marriages with Mussulmans. These have at least a perfectly legitimate title to the name by a sort of cadet copyhold. The hill Rajputs of the Himalayas, among whom for generations survived the last indigenous school of Indian painting, can also fairly put forward a claim based on historical descent. But in addition, throughout Northern India, whenever by the fortune of circumstance a new tribe, not yet included as a caste in the orthodox Hindu system, has attained to princely power, the claim to true Rajput ancestry, for a time overlaid and obscured by the dust-layers of adversity, is propounded and defended. Minstrels in India are no less complacent than genealogists and heralds in Europe; and a ruling chief can have a mythical founder of his line disinterred from unknown records as readily as can a British peer. Instances are many and notorious; but it would be invidious to retail cases, where very often the tribe or its ruling family are in every way worthy of inclusion. [Illustration: MAHRATTI LADY]