I hear that there is now a large assemblage of troops in
the upper provinces going to take foreign countries; if they are
opposed, they will kill people. We only do the same.'[18] The history
of the rise of every nation in the world unhappily bears out the
notion that princes are only robbers upon a large scale, till their
ambition is curbed by a balance of power among nations.
On the 25th[19] we came on to Dhamela, fourteen miles, over a plain,
with the range of sandstone hills on the left, receding from us to
the west; and that on the right receding still more to the east. Here
and there were some insulated hills of the same formation rising
abruptly from the plain to our right. All the villages we saw were
built upon masses of this sandstone rock, rising abruptly at
intervals from the surface of the plain, in horizontal strata. These
hillocks afford the people stone for building, and great facilities
for defending themselves against the inroads of freebooters. There is
not, I suppose, in the world a finer stone for building than these
sandstone hills afford; and we passed a great many carts carrying
them off to distant places in slabs or flags from ten to sixteen feet
long, two to three feet wide, and six inches thick.
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